Earth Hour. Before and After

OKAYS. Imma ask everyone to shut up about Earth Hour. Shut up about it, and if you like it, you do it. If you don’t like it, whatever whine you put forth is definitely not saving any of earth’s resources either.

I see some people responding positively to it, that’s fine. But there are people yakking on and on about it as though it’s gonna make the world a better place and make everyone poop rainbows in one hour. Well guess what, if it really is gonna help THAT drastically, it would have done so already since this is not the first Earth Hour organised.

For those who condemn it to pits of hell, lemme tell u something. You whining about “better dai if dun wan to use earth resources...” is not gonna make a difference to the world either. You don’t think this is gonna help in any way, then don’t do anything about it. Why shoot down people’s effort to make a difference? It’s not as if you’re doing something so wonderfully fantastic to save the world either.

Earth Hour is a baby step. Some say it’s a publicity stunt, well I say any publicity is good publicity. Even if it’s a “stunt” it’s helping to bring the message across. Whether the people are gonna accept the message, understand it and implement energy-saving habits, that’s another business.

To be exact, I understand these whiners are shooting it down most probably because we’re speaking in Malaysia’s context; since there are still a lot of people who come from the mountains and don’t know what is civil awareness. But Earth Hour is not an entirely bad thing. I agree it might not have any major effects to the mindset of people or to the environment but heck we gotta start SOMEWHERE, don’t we?

Shut up about it and do it already.

~~~

That was typed and saved as a draft on my lappie before the Earth Hour.

I’m posting post-Hour about what happened DURING the Hour.

So, what happened in that one hour? I turned off my lappy early and turned off my lights and fan one minute before the Hour started and lighted my tealight candles. And I was there chilling and wondering whether I should go turn off the corridor lights before the lights went out themselves. At the same moment I heard girls from another block screaming. Then I knew, the college was gonna go with Earth Hour whether we liked it or not.

So I lighted more candles, 6 in total: 1 for the aroma oil, the other 5 to light up my room. Wasn’t gonna let myself walk around in total darkness and risk tripping over myself and have a fatal fall. So I lay on the bed, played sudoku on my phone coz I didn’t turn off my phone like I said I would, since I wasn’t in the sleeping mood. Surprisingly the night was quite cool without the fan. I then got bored and brought one candle and walked out into the corridor and looked out the balcony. I saw the road, and it was pitch black. No street lamps. That’s when I knew it wasn’t just the college, it was the whole UKM. So I talked a bit on the phone with my brother, played more sudoku, and sms-ed a couple of people out of boredom. And before I knew it, the lights were back on! And 4 minutes early, at that.

I knew for as fact that there would be people who would not respond to this movement coz either they’re too much in their comfort zone to give it up for an hour or they’re plain lazy or they think there’s just no point in this movement or they misunderstood it.

There’s a big misconception that this is done in order to save electricity in that one hour so that we can reduce global warming and save the earth blablabla. Sorry, these people are really mistaken. Earth Hour will not be responded to by everyone, by choice or compelled to. But it does bring up the publicity, doesn’t it? People who talk shit about it feeling they do much better in saving energy than this campaign would, it’s good for them and the world since these people are already saving energy.

For those who do this just to alleviate the guilt they have for wasting energy all year long, it’s a good time to let them reflect on what they have done. Even if they don’t learn something from this, they DID stop wasting energy for one hour.

So is it a bad thing, this Earth Hour? No. Not in my opinion. :)