Earth Hour

The annual Earth Hour was held again this year throughout the world with an estimated 1 billion people participating in this climate change awareness event. A sociologist might ask if turning out your lights for an hour will raise enough awareness to change the world. I hope to answer this question in my journal.

People from 80 countries worldwide turned out their lights for about an hour in this event. This message, that turning out your lights for a while or even when not being used, could help against global warming. Having children participate could help condition them to think that by turning of lights could directly help them save the world. Because these children are our world’s next politicians, leaders and governments, they will learn that we have to keep our planet green.

Not only were residential lights turned out, but businesses also committed to turning lights out. A perfect example of this would be at Pearson International Airport. When they committed to turning off a bunch of unused lighting in some of their terminals for an hour last year, they just keep them off now that they aren’t really needed. So Earth Hour jump started this airport’s commitment to our saving our planet.

Earth Hour helped give more power to the “green movement” by arising awareness to people and businesses around the world. Sometimes we just need a huge event to start a new way of living and that’s what Earth Hour did. Hopefully Earth Hour will continue to help the environment by the ways of raising awareness.