This article from the National Post forwarded to me by Stacey May made me snort-laugh:
At 8:15 p.m. on Saturday, [Toronto] Mayor David Miller got in a car and drove from City Hall to a Shoppers Drug Mart on Eglinton Avenue West. He bought a card for the bar mitzvah of a family friend. Then he got back in the car, driven by his press secretary, Don Wanagas, and went to the bar mitzvah.
The Mayor did this during Earth Hour, after having called on Torontonians to “join me in the dark.”
The Post article goes on to insinuate that Miller is a big fat hypocrite, though it does stop to quote his supporters who say funny things like ““The Mayor has lots of things to do. He was very helpful in turning off the lights.”
But is it Earth Hour that is the big fat hypocrite? Tell me if I sound like the kind of person who enjoys crushing the dreams of small children and ripping up flower beds, but like the much maligned Buy Nothing Day, to me Earth Hour seems like one of those days that requires zero sacrifice, and allows the extremely class privileged to feel like we’re doing our part for one day (or one hour!) of the year. We get to pat ourselves on the back for really doing the absolute least possible that we can do.
I know that my bitterness and cynicism makes me very unattractive. But superficial and extremely showy acts towards social or political consciousness make me hopping mad. Not only do they allow people to think that things aren’t as dire as they are - because the fact that turning off our lights for one hour seems meaningful, implies (inaccurately!) that things can’t possibly be that bad - they allow people to feel righteous about acts which really aren’t that righteous. They set the bar for “doing the right thing” pretty damn low.
Is something really better than nothing? I must admit that the numbers from Earth Hour are worth noting: in Toronto energy use dropped by 8.7% (compared to average use for this time of year), in Christchurch, New Zealand it dropped by 13.1%.
But we wouldn’t celebrate “Don’t Use Racial Slurs” Hour, “Don’t Say Abusive Things to Your Female Partner” Week or “Let a Homeless Person Sleep On Your Porch” Day. Because those holidays would clearly trivialise hugely important issues, and deeply insult efforts to meaningfully end racism, violence against women and poverty.
So is Earth Hour ok?
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six comments
I agree Thea. In principle, Earth Hour sounds like a great idea. We can all get excited about doing our little bit to help the Earth, pat ourselves on the back, and move on. There's even a new show on the discovery program about two people who are going to travel around the country with the purpose of learning about environmentally friendly ways of living. Of course, being cynical, I suspect that their biggest impact on the environment will be a whole lot of fast food wrappers and carbon emissions from their bus.
Everyone wants to feel like they are doing something good for the environment. Companies are latching onto the idea as a way to appear like the good guys …all it really amounts to is a lot of well-intended actions that may end up harming the environment more than healing it.
The government has finally latched onto what corporations have known for a while: being green is cool. In BC they want to introduce a carbon tax and they are demolishing old schools to make smaller, more cost-efficient, energy conserving ones. What I want to know is why the average Canadian seems to be expected to make most of the changes instead of the big corporations. To me, all these new policies and campaigns seem to be acting like a smokescreen. Why are the corporations that are selling us re-usable bags when they continue to be the largest perpetrators when it comes to pollution? It seems to me they think that by keeping us busy consuming and congratulating ourselves for turning out the lights, we won’t notice their hypocrisy.
Posted by Taylor
April 4, 2008, 8:31 PM
I celebrated Earth Hour, but not because I thought that it would save electricity. I celebrated it because it was a nice break from a hectic consumer society.
From an ethical standpoint it was good too. It raised a lot of awareness about climate change and made it seem a manageable issue. Sure turning off the lights for one hour won't help that much, but maybe now more people will be thinking about flicking off the lights they don't need on a more regular basis.
Posted by Natalie
April 4, 2008, 9:03 PM
You know Natalie, I felt the same way about Earth Hour, in the days and hours leading up to it. (I even pre-made dinner that night in anticipation of the fact that I would not be home until just before 8pm that day and wanted to not have to turn on the lights or use the appliances during Earth Hour) But then I got stuck in traffic on my way home from picking up a friend at the airport and was forced to realise that practically NONE of the major (read: corporate) office buildings downtown were honouring Earth Hour... and now I feel much more inclined to agree with the sentiments of Taylor and Thea...
Much like a hilarious scene in a theatre show I saw recently (Squashamole! by IF Theatre) that poked fun at the convenient of environmentalism of the privileged ("Yuppies LOVE to recylce... It's a really convenient way for them to feel like they're helping the environment but still allowing them to be consumers of their favorite products like bottled water, iced green tea, etc...") I think that Earth Hour was a convenient way for us to FEEL like we were making a difference...
And pardon my Thea-like cynicism, but I really wonder if Earth Hour actually "raised any awareness" at all... I mean, didn't we all already know that turning off our lights and conserving energy is important, or did we all miss that day in grade 2 when they taught that?
Posted by Meghan Marie
April 4, 2008, 11:09 PM
My friends and I were just thinking about that when the posters for the TCDSB Earth Hour went up at our school. We were planning to have an Earth Hour Day to celebrate my birthday, but unfortunately due to poor planning we couldn't really make it happen. As soon as those posters we hung our heads and thought that it wouldn't make more than a marginal difference.
And at that hour, the lights were going off, anyway.
Posted by Brianne
April 5, 2008, 10:28 AM
I agree to some degree with what everybody says here, but for once I'm more optimistic than critical. Corporations don't care about the environment. What else is new? But they are starting to see that WE do and are trying to placate our need for grener living. Is it genuine? Of course not. But clearly we are impacting them and while things may be moving at snail-pace, for the first time in a very long time activism is being acknowledged as something that can be mainstream and widely trendy. There are lots of problems that come from that and public activism, grassroots or otherwise, is never perfect. But even very uninformed people are caring about this and there's real room for mass solidarity. This is somehow different for me than a "don't-make racial-slurs hour". We all live on this planet and we all abuse it. We all need to be in this together, and doing whatever makes since for us, because even small things make us feel powerful. This is a collective statement about that. The point about David Miller is a cheep political shot. All activism is full of these kinds of contradictions and is he not permitted to attend a friend's party without journalists lurking about trying to punch holes in his activism? That said, he's no saint. None of us are. But that does not mean we should throw up our hands. Tokens are important. Anyway, it was an education for me about how pointless it is to try to be purist about even this simple stuff. My parents wanted to play scrabble and the hour became a huge argument about weather they could use the light-dimmer. Not at all in the spirit of earth hour. I guess like everybody I just have this big need to know that I have some impact and that there's a world beat at this near impenetrable wall with me. Why is it so hard to find that these days?!
Posted by Myra
April 7, 2008, 8:20 PM
The whole idea of an hour of no power i found to be a tiny step in helping or raising awareness, remember the black out? That is what we need, a whole day of now power, but sadly some people are so depending on power, they forget the basics. but i think that earth day of no lights would make a better difference. Down side, IF we all turned off the power at the same time, and then back on the surge, might cause power failures, from it all comign back on at once.
Posted by Leah
April 11, 2008, 7:06 PM
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