No Man’s Blog

Tomorrow at 8.30pm local time marks Earth Hour and there is a lot going on.

Climate change awareness (and action) is in a weird state at the moment. On the one hand, the financial climate seems to grab all headlines and public attention – when the financial system collapses, there is no time for treehuggers scaremongering. I think that the awareness and motivation to act on climate change has reached a bit of a dead end in the past year or so. Following and around the release of Stern report, Al Gores’s inconvenient truth and the big media push, global warming was very hip topic back in 2007. But now that most people are ‘doing their bit’ and following ’5 easy cheap steps to save the planet’ there seems to be a green fatigue – we failed in keeping the conversations around global warming interesting. I personally read and promote this important issue far less than I used to 2 years ago – I plead guilty.

But I also think that while the public indeed took some important steps, governments proved to be a bunch of wankers and people rightly argue that the BIG change has to come top down with some serious commitment and legislations. Unfortunately there is very little environmental leadership at hand, both in the UK and abroad.

Hopefully Obama will change that and succeed in taking the right steps to halt the grim predictions of our melting planet. OK i carried away – where were we? oh yes, Earth Hour the annual international event created by the WWF. Based on an idea successfully executed in Thailand in 2005, it was pioneered by WWF Australia and the Sydney Morning Herald in 2007, and achieved worldwide participation in 2008.

2400 cities in 82 countries have officially signed on to turn off their lights on Saturday, March 28th at 8:30p.m. local time. (Last year they had nearly 400 cities in 35 countries committed). This year the great pyramids, the acropolis in greece, Rockefeller center and Broadway Theater marquees among other landmarks will go dark during earth hour.

If I didn’t convince you, here is Alanis Morissette:

Earth Hour: The Huge Turn Off- Alanis Morissette PSA

Happy earth hour.