Today is the Earth Hour. Millions of people world wide is celebrating the Day by switching off their light between 8.30pm to 9.30pm. The Day is a day to remind people on the effect of climate change. Switching off the light will reduce demand on electricity, and hence the burning of fuel which is one of the major contributor to carbon dioxide generation. However, to me this is not the main purpose of organising Earth Hour, but rather on this Day, what commitment we should make to ourselves that we are going to do to combat global warming, to minimise degradation of environmental quality, to conserve natural environment, to produce less waste, to generate less CO2 and etc. It must be a personal pledge and action through out the Day, and not confining to an hour starting from 8.30pm. We might think of reducing our carbon footprint and water footprint. Perhaps sleep early is a good choice as no electricity is supposed to be used. On this respect, the activities planned by many commercial establishments during that hour, to me is not favourable. Celebration activities that involve shopping crowd to participate is a commercial marketing decision and part of the corporate social responsibility of the businesses to raise awareness. However, I must say that I would not agree to such celebration activities if many people from far and near making a special trip to join the celebration. These are people who might not want to come to shop but choose to do so with plenty of activities and prizes are promised. They might come with their own vehicles which will generate more CO2. They might eat and shop more with their lavish spending habit. The streets are jam up with sudden increase of vehicles.
To me, less celebration with mass gathering is better answer for the intended message for Earth Hour. Happy Earth Hour 2012.
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