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Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru
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If this is the case, it should be advertised as such. Getting people to make a change over the course of one hour on one day of the year is all well and good, but long-term change requires much stronger commitment (and, by extension, advocacy). There needs to be a very strong follow-up that, from where I'm sitting, just doesn't seem to be there.
EDIT for cross-posting:
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Originally Posted by willravel
It's less dramatic. 90% of protesting is in the dramatic delivery, so as to attract the attention necessary for things to get done. Imagine if Atlanta, Chicago, Honalulu, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Denver, Miami, Portland, Phoenix, San Francisco, Quebec, Ontario, Toronto, BC, Alberta, Dubai, Manila, Copenhagen, Cardiff, and Dublin all saw a drop of 10% in energy consumption? All of those cities are involved in Earth Hour 2008, whereas last year it was only Sydney. Imagine if Sydney can offset the equivalent of 48,000 cars, that'd be nearly a million cars. In just one hour.
That's fucking dramatic.
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I understand this, but at the same time it would appear that there was little to no follow-up on it. What should be happening is a bold statement in conjunction with high-visibility advocacy for long-term strategies. Earth Hour has the first part, but doesn't seem to have the follow-up down. Perhaps they should be highlighting the savings benefit? Again using myself as an example, I rarely pay more than $50 per month on my electric bill, and am able to achieve that because of my commitment to being energy efficient. I am writing this by the glow of my CRT. as I see no need to have lights on and am quite adept at navigating my apartment in the dark. All of my light bulbs are CF type, the largest of which is 15 watts. I rarely have the television on, and I don't leave any appliances on when I don't need them. All of these things are concessions that I've made not to save the world (the world does not need saving) but rather to avoid having to pay any more money than is absolutely necessary to the electric company. If it has the benefit of reducing emissions, then that's great.
Here in Canada a couple years back the Canadian government spearheaded something called the one tonne challenge, where they hired Rick Mercer to go on television and challenge Canadians to reduce their carbon footprint by one tonne over the next year. I remember laughing when I saw the ads - given my energy consumption habits (detailed above) and my driving habits (I refuse to drive anywhere that's less than a mile away and in nice weather will walk as far as two miles, which is the limit of my town) I don't think I could possibly reduce my emissions by one tonne without any action less dramatic than moving into the mountains and foregoing all modern conveniences. I do it all not for the environment but for other advantages (health benefits, savings, etc). I've often wondered why this isn't advertised more strongly. Then again, I may just be underestimating the laziness of the general population. Who knows?