Compendium of Me

The content of this post has lingered on my mind for the past few days, and hence this post is long overdue. However, I needed time to do the research, and as any avid Wikipedia reader will tell you, one could end up spending hours on completely unrelated topic.

Before and after Earth Hour, there are always hype about it. What I could not understand though, was the amount of cynics out there critical of Earth Hour. One only needs to conduct a basic Google search to see for oneself the adverse sentiments towards it. One of the most common arguments not to participate is that it is not going to achieve anything. Another that I have read is that people (businesses) exploit the hype of Earth Hour to promote their interests. Is that inherently bad?

Even before Earth Hour started, there are already two people asking me my opinion of Earth Hour. I tell them that it’s good for awareness, but not necessarily beneficial as a measure to save energy or reduce power usage. In fact, in the darkness, people turn to candles – which is actually more detrimental to the environment.

The critics, however, are dead wrong. Earth Hour has never ever been a way to reduce power usage. The goal has always been to raise awareness about climate change and push our leaders to do something about it. The key word here is “Awareness”. As a first year event in Malaysia though, I would say Earth Hour 2009 is quite successful.

People are talking, people are taking actions, people are participating – people are aware. My parents, who would not normally take any notice to climate change and sustainability, asked us what we were going to do for Earth Hour 2009. If they weren’t aware of climate change, they certainly are starting to learn now – through Earth Hour 2009.

In fact, we never did a thing. Earth Hour 2009 came and gone without us flipping any switch. However, that’s because we already save as much energy as possible all year round. Our house is normally pitch black, except for a few lights we truly use and need. Most of through lights are Compact Fluorescent Light(bulbs) (CFL). We already are aware, and we are doing our part in the fight against climate change.

Apart from that, critics said Earth Hour is not going to achieve anything. Well, the Malaysian utility company TNB registered a 550MW dip in demand. That’s not much, but that’s not bad either for a first-year event. Assuming that the dip is for an entire hour, the energy saved would be 550MWh. According to TNB data, that’s equivalent to displacing the average ANNUAL energy consumption of around 200 TNB domestic customers. Using my average annual consumption, 550MWh would still be equivalent to taking at least 100 household off the grid totally for one year. 550MWh also shaved off TNB’s revenue by about RM150,000. Impressive – no, but it’s definitely a start.*

The second goal of Earth Hour is to push our leaders to start acting to climate change. It’s all about the power of the masses, to show what we can achieve if we just cooperate and work together. It’s about crowd sourcing – taking the power of the individuals to achieve large effects. It’s about mass participation. We do it every now and then, through voting, through Wikipedia articles, and certainly through OpenStreetMap data. If we  care so much and are enthusiastic about election and voting, why the cynical attitude towards Earth Hour?

Based on that, I would say Earth Hour is a success, even in Malaysia. However, as many has pointed out, that’s not enough. Now that the symbolic gesture is over, it’s time for the real action to start. Start living a more sustainable lifestyle. Start learning more about climate change and what you can do about it. And most certainly, start pushing our leaders to do their part.

*Disclaimer: Hours of reading Wikipedia indicated to me that probably no energy is  ever “saved” by the 550MWh dip in demand. There probably wasn’t any single power plant which was shut down. The reason for that, I shall explain in the future.