I had a lot of time in my hands in the past weekend doing nothing in particular except for saving baby turtles from being eaten by nasty ants, so I thought of writing a lengthy post on why I liked the concept behind Earth Hour but in spite of that, why I thought the promotion of the awareness campaign had in fact given the whole event a bad name. But since there are already a handful or such blog posts floating around, I should just give that a miss. The “lengthy post” part, I mean.

To me, observing Earth Hour is pretty much like observing World Water Day on March 22nd, or observing Earth Day on April 22nd, or observing World Clean Up Day on the third weekend in September or even observing World Turtle Day on May 23rd, in that I don’t expect anything to happen in these days, but I kind of expect something good to come out of them. OK, expecting something good to turn up but not actually doing anything is not quite the right attitude, but you get what I mean?

Earth Hour should be treated like any other “world days” because it is just another awareness campaign. And awareness campaigns are supposed to educate the public about certain issues, and by creating, raising and spreading such awareness, we hope that the general public will do what they think is best — for themselves and for the environment.

For example, in my workplace, we carry out a lot of public awareness programs. I give talks about the (sad and sorry) plight of our turtles to the public who might not even appear to be interested in the first place. I tell them why our turtles are becoming extinct, and I tell them what THEY can do to help save our turtles. And not surprisingly, people find that kind of approach “friendly” because then, we toss the ball into their court, and THEY get to make the decision. An informed decision. Plus, I always tell people that our leatherback turtles are not coming back just because the sale of their eggs is prohibited. What we should indeed do is to protect the other turtles from going the way our leatherback turtles did by saving and conserving them. It is a long-term effort, no doubt, but then again, what isn’t?!

And like a lot of our turtle awareness programs, people don’t wake up in the morning and suddenly feel that they are more aware of the environment, or that they want to do something for the environment.

So if you want to do your part to slow down global warming, you should not only switch off your lights for an hour tonight. You should also:

• reduce, reuse and recycle
• use less heat and air-conditioning, whether at home or at the office
• drive less, or take a public transportation, or carpool
• buy only energy-efficient products and appliances
• switch off whatever products or appliances when not in use, the computer, the TV, the air-conditioning in your bedroom when you’re actually watching football in the living room, etc.

And more importantly, encourage your friends to do the same! :)