Saving Us From Ourselves: Earth Hour

What are you doing this Saturday night? At 8 pm (local time) many people across the globe will be participating in Earth Hour. (Warning: dramatic Jeremy Piven narrated sound clip at that link.) The concept behind the Earth Hour movement is simple: shut off your lights for one hour. Just to see what it's like. To get us thinking. Do we really need to be consuming all of the energy that we normally don't give a second thought to using? The movement has expanded globally since its origination last year in Sydney. Now many major cities have embraced it. (A hotel bar in Toronto is even advertising themed drinks in support.) Even though Philadelphia is not listed as a partner that doesn't mean you can't participate.

Sure, this sounds like a silly gimmick. Truthfully, we can't honestly tell you that we will be participating. We don't think the guests we've invited over are the sit-in-the-candlelight-and-share-our-feelings type. Okay, with the crowd coming over, it would probably be more along the lines of sit in the candlelight, drink wine, and play Trivial Pursuit. Either way, it probably won't happen.

You might ask then, why promote Earth Hour without promising to participate? Because the bigger concept behind Earth Hour is not to simply conserve an hour's worth of energy. Instead, it's to really get us thinking about the choices we make as we pass our days. And also to get us thinking about the choices we aren't making because we aren't taking the time to stop and think. How about something as simple as unplugging the cellphone charger instead of leaving it perpetually plugged in? Seems like it shouldn't even be a concern, but most likely a large number of us leave chargers and other similar electronics plugged in, zapping phantom energy day and night, simply because we haven't thought about it. Surely we would unplug it if the thought to do so crossed our minds. But that's the problem right there—we aren't thinking about it. We are just chugging along, gobbling up energy and other resources without giving it a second thought.

So, whether or not you choose to go dark for Earth Hour, please at least use that time to contemplate your consumption and begin thinking about ways to conserve energy in your daily life.

Image Credit: Flickr user aussiegall