On 19th March 2016, the Event named ” Earth Hour”
celebrated its 10th anniversary. The Earth Hour is a global movement
organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). It encourages individuals,
business and communities to turn off their non-essential lights for an hour,
aimed to save electricity and energy for the planet.
The Earth Hour is usually held annually on the last Saturday
of March from 8:30pm to 9:30 pm during participants’ local time, and Sydney, as
a pioneer, becomes the first country to respond to this event in 2007. It is
said that over two million citizens joined in, and 2.2% to 10.2% electricity
was save on that day in the city of Sydney. The success of the initial event
attracts lots of followers. It has grown to more than 7000 cities and towns
worldwide so far, such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore. In October
2007, San Francisco even ran its own program, Light out, inspired by the Earth
Hour, with similar purposes.
Candles used in Shanghai Earth Hour Event
However, can electricity and energy be really saved via such
kind of events? Yes and no. Appreciation of the Earth Hour has been received by
more and more regions, but criticism is raised at the same time.
Every year, the cost and carbon emission caused by
significant promoting events before the Earth Hour is far more than those saved
in the hour. The event is criticized to lose its real value.
In 2013, the Project Syndicate published its article “Earth
Hour Is a Colossal Waste of Time and Energy”. It argues that the event will
cause more emission of carbon, rather than saving electricity. Everytime the
event finishes, the emission of carbon produced will be approximately equal to
those saved in the past hour.
Moreover, when candles is used in the event as a replacement,
CO and black smoke caused by insufficient burning could do harm to the
environment. The Earth Hour seems to create a feel-good factor, which makes
people consider they are doing something beneficial to the earth.
Since so many negative points are pointed out by the public,
shall we still keep the Earth Hour and relevant events? Let’s talk about more
on this topic in next blog.
Reference: https://earthhour.org.au/documentary-2016/
没有评论:
发表评论