New Indian Express, March 28, 2009WILL you join what is being advertised as the largest global campaign of all time? Well, more than a billion people will when they switch off their home or office lights for an hour at 8-30 pm (local time) this Saturday, “sending a powerful global message that it is possible to take action on climate change”.
Of course, a few billion others have other plans that evening and please do not feel unsure if you are among them. It does not matter. It really does not matter unless you are prepared to mind your unnecessary appliances every hour and every day. Unless you are ready to cut down your overall, wasteful consumption – from fuel to food – and go for a lifestyle makeover. Switching off for an hour is too damn easy, and dangerous.
Tokenism is always fraught with dangers of falsity. But campaigns like the Earth Hour offer individuals a particularly dangerous bargain – great satisfaction at a nominal sacrifice. You switch off for an hour, have fun (maybe by consuming more power listening to musical blasts), and feel good that you have voted for the planet. The next day, and the year after, you may continue guzzling unmindfully since you have already done your green bit in style.
I am not a cynic. But I do not want to fool myself. The Earth Hour campaign is in its third year and claiming phenomenal growth in participation -- from 2.2 million in 2007 to about 50 million last year and more than a billion this week. But where is the proof of any tangible change in the consumer mindset?
Annual increase in the global consumption of electricity is hovering around the double-digit mark since 2005. Sydney, where the Earth Hour movement was famously kicked off in 2007, recorded a 16.56 per cent growth in power consumption between 2006-07 and 2007-08. Even if we discount the huge power demand to keep the city’s water pumps going, consumption at office and public buildings went up by 9.12 per cent in the same time period.
In comparison, Delhi, a “developing” city with a higher population and no history of Earth Hour campaign, records much less annual growth – between 4-5 per cent -- in power demand. What no climate change campaign could have done was achieved by a hike in power tariff and stricter anti-tampering initiatives.
The Earth Hour campaign does make a symbolic point and, more importantly, keeps the issue of climate change in news, coming a day before the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) starts its first 11-day inter-session meeting in Bonn, and a few months before the Copenhagen Climate meet due in December. But, by brandishing figures of participants -- 1000-plus cities and one billion-plus people -- the campaign also raises false hope.
Many of us accept the need to cut down unnecessary, unscientific and unsustainable consumption. Some of us do not. But most of us simply do not care – either because we are too rich or too poor or just inert. The rich-poor divide will be up for debate at Copenhagen. But we must accept that adapting to a low-carbon lifestyle and economy is not easy because of our inertia, if nothing else. This is true for individuals and so it is true for governments.
Honestly, how many of the billion-plus who will switch off this Saturday are expected to make “permanent lifestyle compromises” should their governments make a few necessary or mandatory? Forget feeling the heat of such tokenism, few governments will ever risk green reforms assuming their people are not prepared to accept corresponding lifestyle changes.
While campaigns like the Earth Hour rightly address the issue by targeting individuals, unfortunately, they also opt for the easy way out. I do not think there is any dearth of options for strategising a campaign that could make a real difference. With all the existing resources – clout, funds and volunteers – such campaigns could try enrolling people who would make commitments of cutting down, say, 20 per cent of their energy consumption. Members -- individuals and organisations -- would furnish their bills to show how they have done over a period of time. It is very much possible to log such individuals on a global web register and quantify the change.
Instead of a billion switching off for an hour because it is fashionable, I will any day take even a few million converts making lifestyle changes because they really care. Each of these converts would be an inspirational example to convince more people. Yes, such campaigns would have been hard work and the figures would not have made the glamorous jump from 2.2 million to 1 billion in two years. But over a longer period of time, they would have worked a true miracle that could decisively force governments’ hands. Besides, a community of a billion no-waste consumers would anyway have had an impact on the planet’s future.
Wishful thinking? Maybe, maybe not.
So will I switch off this Saturday evening? I might, I anyway like darkness. You, too, should switch off unless you have a good excuse. In either case, please remember to switch off appliances and engines every time you think possible. That may or may not save the earth, but you will save some money.
Author is an independent journalist and filmmaker
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