The Earth Hour - My Second Speech at Toastmasters

How many of you flipped the switch during earth hour last weekend?

Hmm nice response.

Earth Hour 2010 took place on Saturday 27 March 2010. Look, the thing about Earth Hour is – it’s fun. You have dinner or a drink in the candlelight, or get to a viewpoint where you can watch your city’s lights go out, then blink back on 60 minutes later, or give your kids an excuse to run around the house with a flashlight. If you’re more ambitious, you go to an event in your home town. And if you don’t like any of those options, I’m sure you can come up with some other fun stuff to do in the dark ;) I know, you guys are very creative.

Like a lot of you, I also switched off my lights both in 2009 and in 2010. However, the earth hour in 2009 was quiet different for me than 2010.

In 2009, We enjoyed the earth hour with a candle light dinner and strawberry margaritas at home. And in 2010, we enjoyed our dinner with original lemon margaritas :) You are probably thinking, Oh! so the speech is about the Earth Hour. No it is about strawberry margaritas vs. lemon margaritas. Sorry for the disappointment! It is not about the margaritas but about the evolution of my perception for the earth hour.

Last year in 2009. Like many, I also thought that turning off the lights for one hour will make no difference. But I still participated. You know why? For three reasons:

1. To look cool.
   
2. To have a story to share when someone asked me if I turned off my lights.
   
3. and the biggest and most motivating - To drink margaritas and party.

After the earth hour was over, I was so excited to share my story that I shared it with my friends and colleagues even when they didnt ask about it. I was happy answering the "How did i participate" of earth hour but when I could not answer the "Why did i participate" of it, I decided to give it a closer look.

Earth Hour started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia when 2.2 million homes and businesses turned their lights off for one hour to make their stand against climate change. Only a year later and Earth Hour had become a global sustainability movement with more than 50 million people across 35 countries participating. In March 2009, hundreds of millions of people took part in the third Earth Hour. Over 4000 cities in 88 countries officially switched off to pledge their support for the planet, making Earth Hour 2009 the world’s largest global climate change initiative. Reports show that the United States topped the Earth Hour participation with an estimated 80,000,000 people, 318 cities and 8 states participating.

In one corner are those who believe that Earth Hour is an important communal statement: up to a billion people flicking their switches to signal their commitment to energy efficiency as a way to lower our collective environmental footprint.

In the other are those who can’t believe so many suckers fall for the idea that Earth Hour is important, because they feel

1. Light brings safety. There are safer ways to make a statement and raise awareness than to create a controlled time when thieves will be harder to spot.
2. The energy spent raising awareness about Earth Hour just might cancel out the energy saved that hour
3. One hour out of 168 in a week, 720 in a month, and 8760 in a year will not make a significant dent in your energy use. People consume energy in many forms and not just electricity. Earth hour does not provide any insights on those important aspects.

I agree with anti earth hour folk's sentiment when they say that earth hour does not "really" save energy. And even if it does, it is negligible. But I disagree with them when they say that it is an exercise in vain. it's OK if the campaign does not save energy but it definitely helps politicizing against "climate change" at the global level. It is the hour when every body across the globe come together and join hands against climate change.

Climate change is essentially a political problem, and the language of politics is symbolism. Switching off lights together is a symbol to draw attention towards climate change. "Unlike most of the issues that we grapple with, climate change is global. The pressure is on us to do the right thing." If shutting off the lights for an hour and doing yoga in the dark makes that political support, well, then let us do it.

The environmental movement is reaching a delicate moment. We're well past the point where going green is novel. We've become inured to the existence of global warming, to its inconvenient truth. But this is the moment when we need to keep pushing in every way we can. The technologies that will help us decarbonize energy are developing, but they need a push — and that will only happen if we keep climate change near the top of our political agenda. Earth Hour, Earth Day, Earth Year — Yes, I am waiting for 2011. But next year it will be margaritas with real strong emotions against climate change and not just for fun.