It’s an admirable idea. To get everyone to consume less electricity for an hour. That was the stated aim of Earth Hour, a global effort by the WWF (that’s this lot, not these guys) to try to get as many people as possible to switch their lights off for an hour. Now was it a success? It depends on how you define “success”. I think that the participation in Earth Hour was quite overwhelming – millions of people worldwide did indeed turn their lights or electricity off, news stations did their broadcasts in the dark, and even Google made a token effort by turning  black (which has nothing to do with saving power but rather saving white pixels). But, as someone who cares about the environment, after an hour of living in relative darkness, I was disappointed to find out: the planet isn’t saved yet.

Why not? It’s because we don’t care enough. I’m including myself in that category - I’m all for alternative energy and for preventing global warming, but I, like many people around the world, don’t do a thing about it. Most of us felt like we were really making a difference during Earth Hour by turning off our lights. We felt like we were saving the planet. But if we were serious we’d get out there and protest, pour money into alternative energy, try and get into politics to make a difference. But I, like most others, simply only do what’s convenient. It’s easy enough to turn your lights off for an hour. I could have saved even more energy by unplugging my laptop, but I didn’t. Cause I was using it – simple as that. I didn’t want to slightly inconvenience myself. And I feel awful for having that attitude, but the truth is that it’s the way that most people think. And simply put, the planet will not be saved until we get over ourselves. The same goes for any issue - to help poverty, for example, I could be donating to these guys, but the closest I’ve come to “making poverty history” is by playing this (which is fun, don’t get me wrong.)

But that’s not to say that Earth Hour didn’t bring about an amazing community spirit. The blogosphere was a-Twitter about the issue, and people were posting pictures of their dark streets on Flickr left right and centre (here’s mine). It was quite eerie to walk out on to the street at nine o’clock pm and have it feel like midnight, or like the same city years ago, before electricity and before all the conveniences of modern life. The only lights I could see around me belonged to the people across the road, who I doubt care at all about the environment due to the “No Greens” sticker on their four-wheel-drive. But apart from the odd household, nearly everyone got behind Earth Hour, and made the event in some ways a success.

But like with any issue, this problem of depleting resources and global warming won’t go away until we do something about it – a little more than a token effort of just turning off our lights. Our intentions were good with Earth Hour, but we need to go just a few steps further if we really want to make a difference.

Cross-posted here.