Saskatchewan doesn't do Earth Hour. The event, designed to make people more aware of climate change, was this past weekend, and from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. on Saturday evening Saskatchewan used just as much power as we usually do, with no meaningful difference between the preceding and following hour. We collectively ignored it, myself included.
I don't want to claim to represent the entirety of the province, but I have always ignored Earth Hour, and I probably always will. It's mostly because it's an empty symbolic gesture, one which doesn't actually reach people outside of your own home.
It's a simple matter, when you turn off all of the lights, what are you actually going to do? You could sit in the dark, but that affects only you in your home, and there is no message transferred on. You could go out and do something elsewhere, but then your lights should be off anyway, since nobody is home. It either inconveniences you, because you're unable to accomplish anything in the inky blackness of a March evening, or it doesn't affect you, because you're not home. So what's the point of paying attention to the hour?
Now, admittedly, I don't have children, and an Earth Hour would have the most value for families, as they teach kids what they can do on a Saturday evening without being tethered to some kind of power source. That's an interesting idea, but why do you need an Earth Hour to actually accomplish this in the first place? There are more than enough opportunities throughout the year for these teaching moments, and it's also easier to pitch fun things to do when you're not trying to light your home with candles in an effort to actually see something.
The candles are another problem I have with the entire Earth Hour project, because just lighting your house with something different for an hour isn't going to make much change in the way you live your life. Every time I've had to light my house with candles the only thing that has happened is that I appreciate the light bulb more, as it can actually light an entire room and won't get knocked over by any errant animals which happen to be skulking about. A house fire is going to cause a significant release in greenhouse gasses.
This is not to say I don't advocate saving energy or making one's home as efficient as possible, I definitely do. So does the rest of the province, since SaskPower's efficiency projects tend to be popular. But that's because trying to live efficiently every day is going to be more effective than turning off the lights for a bit. As well, buying the most efficient products you can is going to make those products more cost effective overall, as production is streamlined, making them more desirable to those who might not be on board for most green initiatives.
That's the real problem, convincing the reluctant to get on board. One can do that by showing the advantages of more efficient products and ways of living. It is, however, impossible to do that while you're sitting in your dark house for an hour extinguishing the fires the cat starts with your candles. Earth Hour is a failure because it's a very introverted activity, and instead any activism needs to be extroverted, actually reaching people and getting them to make an effective and permanent change.
