Earth Hour 2020

This weekend plays host to Earth Hour where people turn their lights off for an hour to help save the environment. This is how it is described on the official website:

Started by WWF and partners as a symbolic lights-out event in Sydney in 2007, Earth Hour is now one of the world’s largest grassroots movements for the environment. Held every year on the last Saturday of March, Earth Hour engages millions of people in more than 180 countries and territories, switching off their lights to show support for our planet. But Earth Hour goes far beyond the symbolic action of switching off — it has become a catalyst for positive environmental impact, driving major legislative changes by harnessing the power of the people and collective action. Earth Hour is open-source and we welcome everyone, anyone, to take part and help amplify our mission to unite people to protect our planet.

There is no evidence provided to demonstrate how Earth Hour has become a “catalyst for positive environmental impact.” Indeed, on the same page the website states, “More than a decade later, the climate crisis remains, made worse by another urgent threat: the rapid loss of biodiversity and nature.” It is hard to reconcile these two statements.

No doubt many of you have found Earth Hour a rather depressing phenomenon, watching the progressive media gush over how citizens, businesses and governments were supporting the environment by turning their lights off for an hour. Yet these reports rarely acknowledge how every other hour of the year, those same citizens, businesses and governments do nothing to addresses the environmental crisis on the scale required.

This year, because of the coronavirus, Earth Hour has a number of suggestions that can be followed at home: “Switch off for an hour at home,” “Tune in online to one of our on-the-night live streams,” “Make your voice heard — digitally,” “Share your on-the-night Earth Hour experiences,” “Take on our online challenges and contests,” and “Share this video” (of Greta Thunberg). This feels even more pointless than usual, because apart from the first suggestion, they all involve using more energy, which negates even the symbolic gesture proposed in normal years.

All this suggests that it is by no means obvious that Earth Hour is of any benefit. But it could be worse still. A recent TGF article explored this issue in the context of “online activism”:

The supporting argument for online activism is that it “raises awareness,” with the consequent assumption that this translates into real life action. This assumption is highly contestable: one study of “slacktivism” concluded that, “slacktivist actions, unlike those by dedicated activists, do not encourage others, and if anything, discourage them”; another study concludes with reference to “an illusion of activism rather than facilitating the real thing.” Certainly, raising awareness is important, but such low-engagement activism is a double-edged sword, and could potentially be worse than doing nothing. How so? If a person accepts that there is indeed an environmental crisis but is doing nothing about it, then s/he may feel guilt, which at least has the potential to catalyze some genuinely useful action. However, if a person is sat at home liking social media posts, or even sitting in a street with a sign, s/he might be inclined to think s/he is already doing their bit and there may be no such further catalyst to genuinely useful action. Indeed, if you were a world-destroying mega-corporation or its government minion, this is exactly the type of “protest” you might be inclined to enable, because it can be so easily managed and contained.

Similarly, if people think they are doing something for the environment by supporting Earth Hour, they have been managed and contained. Indeed, we should remember that WWF, the founding partner of Earth Hour, has in the past been accused of “selling its soul” to corporations.

Remember: we need to course-correct the environmental crisis by any means necessary. Symbolic gestures supported by Big Business and governments (and that includes much of the supposed “direct action” performed by the likes of Extinction Rebellion) detract from doing what is necessary.

If you want the ends of a Total Green Future, you have to accept the means to get there.