Earth hour, what a joke. Environmental causes have become the latest fad with people claiming to want to do more, thanks Nick turning off your lights for an hour will certainly do a lot…
What I’m doing: The Rosewater Supper Club will be participating in Earth Hour by shutting off our lights and adorning the venue in candlelight from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., offering our guests an intimate experience while supporting such a worthy cause. We will also be preparing a special prix fixe menu that will be offered to our guests for the evening. The menu will consist of some organic produce, grown locally, something the Rosewater Supper Club has also begun incorporating into our regular menus, not only to support our locals but also to help reduce transportation of the produce. Every little bit counts.
Source: The Star (and in the entertainment section too *sigh*)
Something tells me that Nick and all his customers will be driving to and from tonight.
If you truly want to do something change your life style. Don’t be as wasteful, drive something that’s more efficient (or better yet take transit more) and reuse items, there are a few ideas as a start. Obviously there’s more you can do and the planet needs more than small useless token gestures, it needs the Western world to change fundamentally.
Yeah, Virgin Mobile sent a text to all its customers saying the same thing. Earth Hour? Um okay. How about a nice, tidy package produced for cathartic consumption? “Like, oh my god, we should do this next year!”
To quote something scrawled on a bathroom wall, “Every revolution is consumable.”
I think you missed the whole point of Earth Hour. The point is not to conserve energy for an hour but to make a statement. When people turn their lights out for that hour, they energy companies will see that people are willing to change.
I agree that environmental issues are trendy now, but what’s the point of knocking it? It’s not like it is making the environment worse. If anything it is at least creating more awareness.
I’m with Bobby.
Hey there Bobby.
Thanks for your reply, it’s greatly appreciated. 🙂
I guess I’m a pessimist, what I worry is that people will turn off their lights for an hour and feel that they’ve truly done something for the environment. I don’t think the energy companies (especially big oil) would care much about an hour organized event world wide if people go back to the status quo at 9PM. If anything perhaps people should do an “Earth week” or strongly promote the use of alternative fuels (or better yet reduce our consumption) on Earth day.
Until we’re willing to make changes to our daily lives which benefit the environment, things like Earth hour will continue to be simply token gestures.
Elsewhere I critiqued “the point” as ideology that covers up the consumerist package. It’s a neat little myth to delegitimize critics or people who perceive the kind of middle-class catering this event is.
The “make a statement” discourse is also fairly impoverished in that regard. A statement of beliefs is meaningless when there is no social reality to be its demonstration. Colin’s critique that EH is a token gesture says as much.