Earth Hour

By Julian Sudre

There are many ways that lead to Rome. They converge and diverge in a zigzag fashion that whitewash the eye of the susceptible beholder.

Then the Mephistophelean thump of political correctness rattles the pursuit of men's buffoonery. We traipse uphill and maunder down vale, looking for means of trundling out shell-pink dreams of eternal beauty. We snap - kerfunk - the rest won't be subliminal; the message will be clear and global. The shrill buzz of the alarm cuts through the vastest audience, tantalizes it to the extent of proselytising it. Its butterfly effects washed over a collection of identifiable heart-pumping, as-far-as-the-nose-can-see people who are accustomed to the ebb and flow of contemporary mercurial vacillation.

We are harnessed then spurred on, and again made to scurry along to the nearest point of evacuation. A collective sigh ensues until the alarm is raised again. The drill is over if only we had wished we had foresighted our future.

Television is not enough. When TV advertising overloads our lives with unsavoury band-aid solutions and feel-good bromides, organisations come up with bigger ideas. In an era of global warming, it's time someone used his ace up his sleeve - I put down the earth hour card, and instantly, yes I can tell you this, hue and cry shall come to pass. Not.

Earth Hour happened to be on Saturday, March 29th, 2008 between 8pm and 9pm and it is only two years old. Sure enough, I am not taking a stand against it and I advocate environmental awareness to the hilt as you know by now. In essence, it is meant to, pardon the pun, bring to light how far we have come to consume energy and electricity per se, without the least remorse.

Turning the lights out for one hour is certainly going to give food for thought to a whole society, ergo, purely on a reflective level, we will strive to keep our consumption down. Fat chance. Here lies the misconception and the faulty analysis of it: at bottom, the Earth Hour project has all the flavour of another plasticky marketing headliner. Instead of conveying a good cause, it is a vehicle of inflated publicity that flits through a time slot without a bang. For once, it is a bad piece of PR and although I will fight for driving our energy levels down, this attempt at raising awareness only fizzles out as fast as it appeared.

The latest graphs from the National Electricity Market Management Company in Australia show actually there was in fact no dip in power during the hour, instead it resulted in an orgy of self-congratulatory charade that marched to a different drummer. If we want to orchestrate changes in our attitudes, I don't believe Earth Hour will do much, apart from the fact that it goes incognito or maybe, at the best of time, raises a mere laugh from the populace. If this idea of papering over our sense of self-denial projects derision, then now it is time to change tacks: Kitsch PR is not any longer the lethal weapon du jour and energy companies should cotton on to it now and start pumping their price up. At least some public outcry could be the only ointment to alleviate the pain of environmental awareness.