Hi Danny,
Let me say I am thrilled with your efforts. I love seeing people get active in what they believe. Keep it up! I will add a link to my blogroll to help promote your efforts.
However, I’m afraid your math is wrong. It is not a lot of cars. Let’s do the math based on their own publicity:
If the greenhouse reduction achieved in the Sydney CBD during Earth Hour was sustained for a year, it would be equivalent to taking 48,616 cars off the road for a year.
24 hours a day x 365 days = 8760 total hours/year
48,616 cars/8730 hours = 5.6 cars/hour
Now some cities will have a better energy consumption rate than Sydney and some worse, so for the sake of argument lets go with this. If there are 1200 cities participating each taking the equivalent of 5.6 cars it equals a total of 6,660 cars.Rather than pat ourselves on the back lets look at the energy wasted producing all the advertising materials. I work at the CBC downtown and I bet there are 100 posters in the building advertising this.
Now I think CBC is a sponsor, but these signs are everywhere AND I imagine they’re everywhere in 1200 cities. All those trees cut down to make paper, all that ink (hope it’s eco-friendly), shipping those materials, etc. When you do the math, what exactly are we saving? The planet or our guilty consciences?
If we are serious about this we will have “park your car” day. And on that day alone if just 2.4 million people world-wide park their cars we will have the same results. It’s not that many people, just three or four major cities. We will need to invest in other areas. Toronto will have to do better than just the pathetic 1% of roads that have bike lanes. Transit systems will need to get more efficient, cheaper, better. People will need to start living closer to where they work:
Personally, I would rather spend that hour fixing my bike so I can ride to work, than have another self-congratulating circle jerk in the dark.
Amen. We need a highly efficient (for obvious reasons) meme that basically tells people: “stop raising awareness and start making a change”. People already know much of what is wrong.
Hi there Dave,
First, thank you for the link to 12for12k, I appreciate you offering this.
I agree – Toronto does need to do more, as does every city, town and citizen. If my math is off, I apologise – never was my greatest subject in school 🙂
I think my main point was (and this is where we probably agree) that everyone needs to do something. Where we probably disagree is on just criticising efforts without constructive points being raised.
If I misunderstood you on either front, then that’s my mis-call.
Cheers again for highlighting the need for change, in whatever format.
Hi Dan,
I criticize it because as a species that depends on statistics in our daily lives, we are horrible at it – myself included and I do this for a living!
We need to stop acting impulsively and rationally think about what challenges we want to solve, how we are going to solve them, and measure the results.
The Earth Hour is a PR blitz that no one stopped to think about. No one has assessed the cost versus the benefits. It just feels like the “right thing”.
Instead, as I mentioned in my original post we should be focusing our collective efforts on issues we can solve. That is why I like 12for12K. Child hunger, Children soldiers, micro-loans; these are things I can measure the results in real terms.