EARTH HOUR 2008. 60 minutes of global goodness or just a cool way to spend an hour this Saturday evening?
By Andrea Ledwell
This morning when I was getting coffee, the guy serving me held back my order while he asked me, “So, are you for China or Tibet?”
I’m not used to discussing foreign policy with front line service providers in local patisseries. I’m not used to being confronted with issues of political significance pre-caffeine. The question threw me off.
Obviously, I appeared a little flustered. “It makes no difference to me which you choose,” coffee-boy says, making it clear that some response was required before my coffee would be liberated from his early-adolescent hands.
You’re either for ‘em or agin’ ‘em . I guess that’s how it is in this town.
Problem is, I’ve always seen the grey areas of things - or, at the very least, want to hear as much about an issue before spouting off some sort of decisive opinion about it.
I’ve held onto a much-beloved New Yorker editorial for over a decade where the author pointed out that on most opinion polls the answer “I don’t know enough about this issue to give an educated opinion, can I get back to you on that?” is never an option.
What does this have to do with the upcoming hour of lights-out this weekend?
Well, I guess it’s this: are you shutting down the electricity for the Earth Hour on Saturday or not?
The answer to this question would seemingly suggest that you are for saving the earth or not, for anti-climate change or not, for environmental awareness or not, for anti-consumerism or not. (Well, perhaps we should wait a second on that last one - seems to me that there are a lot of corporations cashing in on this turning stuff off business.)
The thing is, does participating in the Earth Hour on Saturday mean that you are environmentally aware and conscious of the impact your lifestyle and consumer choices have on the effects of global warming?
Call me cynical, because I sometimes am, but when it comes to token gestures, that little subversive voice in my head wants you all to give me a friggin’ break. Really, it’s like those young people standing on the sidewalk on my way home from work asking me if I “have time for Sick Kids?” - using underemployed Canadian youth to pitch an incredibly offensive play on words in order to fund one of Ontario’s major medical research hospitals is offensive on so many levels; suggesting that we can all pat ourselves on the back for picking up on the heavily corporate-sponsored global event on Saturday night, seems a bit smacking of tokenism and, given the seriousness of the global warming crisis, a remarkably empty gesture.
But that’s just my cynical side.
The supporters of this event, and there are many, have pointed out that it’s not necessarily that the event itself will have an immediate impact on anything, but it is an effective way to generate discussion and as an awareness campaign. It reaches out to segments of the population, individuals or businesses, which might not be engaged in the debate about the environmental crisis. And in that sense, there is something quite exciting about the idea of a global marketing campaign that is on the side of the greater good for us all, even if some businesses are cashing out on it. Still.
Another side of me, the more usual playful self, actually just finds the idea of everyone turning out the lights for an hour on Saturday night kind of cool. I think that, after all is said and done, I will opt for the lights out. As for China and Tibet, I think I will save the discussion on that one for next week, when I can take it up with a bartender or someone.