Earth Hour vs. Earth Hour

  

Main Entry:

hour 

Pronunciation:

\ˈau̇(-ə)r\

Function:

noun

Etymology:

Middle English, from Anglo-French ure, eure, from Late Latin & Latin; Late Latin hora canonical hour, from Latin, hour of the day, from Greek hōra — more at year

Date:

13th century

This style of breaking a day into roughly 24 equal portions started back in the middle ages and today it is pretty much the standard of the way we perceive time.  That being said for some reason we have 2 ways of visualizing a 24 hour day.  In two blocks of 12 that start in the AM and then end in the PM which then ends in the AM (So which came first?  The AM or the PM?)  And military time which works with a straight 24 hour clock and is denoted by using the word "hundred" after 1 through 24.  Within each hour we have smaller units called minutes - there are 60 of these in an hour.  This information should not be new to anybody seeing as reading this blog takes rudimentary literacy, so the understanding of simple time progression shouldn't even come close to rocket science.

Earth Hour was conceived of  by Leo Burnett in conjunction with WWF Australia in 2006.  Their idea was to create a campaign to provide hope to everybody, making individuals empowered into directing the future of the planet.  Initially this project was named, "The Big Flick"

Fast forward to 2009, this global movement is set to take place on March 28 between 8:30 and 9:30pm (or 16:30 and 17:30 for you military buffs).  In the previous year Earth hour attracted over 371 cities and town and 35 countries around the world.  From their website it states that they estimate a total of 50 million people participated in this event.

Easily I can get behind an actual Earth hour.  I need to know when my favourite soaps are on the television, what time I need to wake up for work, at times, what time I need to go to sleep.  And most importantly, when my cell phone calls are free.    Being able to break a 24 hour block down into smaller portions makes keeping track of things to do a potentially reasonable task.

Earth Hour in theory is a great way to make people feel like they are helping the environment out.  But since there really isn't any monitoring system to tell how much power was saved world wide, except with the fact that your lights are off, doesn't give a quantifiable justification to taking part in this "feel good" activity.  In the past, in Canada we were given the 1 Ton Challenge.  This idea was to try to reduce your carbon footprint by 1 Ton.  The site had a way for you to calculate how much energy you used in a day.  There were 2 problems with this.  One, the site was rather confusing and unless you were a little internet savvy, calculating your actual usage was a little tricky.  And two, well we all like to feel like we are doing what's best for the environment.  So who's to say that we didn't fudge the numbers a little to make ourselves not feel so bad.

I am all for saving the environment, but getting involved shouldn't just be about joining in with your friends so you have something to discuss in between Grey's Anatomy.  It should be something you can measure.  For instance, if you truly want to help the environment, don't participate in Earth Hour one day a year, do it every day.  And if you find that you are missing out on key prime time television and your TiVo happens to be off too, well there are a multitude of ways to reduce the amount of energy you use.  I would start with a broad search on Google and work your way to a specific area of your lifestyle that you feel could become more energy responsible.  And the best way you can see if you are making an impact on the environment is if your bills for utilities drops at the end of the month (those living in apartments where they are inclusive, well I figure you won't really be looking to save energy as that was a key point in renting the place).

Bottom line is I am happy we have real Earth hours so I can choose not to recognize Earth Hour.