Earth Hour

This week Saturday is the chosen date for this years earth hour, a program started by the World Wildlife Foundation. At 8:30pm on Saturday, everyone is supposed to turn out their lights in an effort to save electricity and promote awareness for energy conservation and the problems occurring because of climate change. Some big landmarks have pledged their support and have promised to turn out the lights including the Las Vegas Strip.

Many environmental bloggers have been creating posts on this event to try and get the word out to the public (see here here and here). Many of these bloggers have also put up pictures and videos from previous years earth hour event.

Some blogs are also debating on the effectiveness of WWF's Earth Hour. They argue that while it is great to conserve energy for an hour, that won't even make a dent in the problems we are facing today and the even bigger problems we will face in the future. They also believe that "there is a risk that it makes people feel that the solution to reducing emissions is to turn off the lights for one hour" and "turning off lights for one hour makes little overall difference and is not an on-going solution, and rather smacks of WWF marketing than effecting real change."

I disagree with these statements and think that it is great that Earth Hour is happening because even if it doesn't make a huge difference, it reminds people that conserving energy -- in any way we know how -- is important. And if it allows WWF (a non-profit dedicated to making this world a better, more sustainable place) to receive some good publicity and marketing, I say even better.