[Reader-list] Why I Won't Be Turning Out My Lights During Earth Hour

[Nagraj Adve]

http://www.greenlightdhaba.org/2010/03/earth-hour-guest-post-delhi-activist.html

Why I Won’t Be Turning My Lights Out During Earth Hour

Earth Hour is upon us again. “Cities across the globe”, says an ad
today in the Hindustan Times, “will switch off lights between 8.30 pm
and 9.30 pm.” Millions across the world will doubtless join in. I
won’t be among them.

Don’t get me wrong. Taken by itself, I’m not against symbolic acts
such as these. For one, they take issues like climate change,
sustainability, urban consumption, energy saving, etc to a whole lot
of people, young and old, some of whom may possibly not have engaged
with these issues before. Actually participating in such an event
helps many people engage even more deeply. Two, by being observed
across the world, it hints at the worldwide nature of some of these
problems and the recognition that these issues are being debated all
over.

Having said that, events such as these may give many the feeling that
they are doing something to save the environment when actually the
direness and urgency of the crises suggest that a lot more need to be
done. When someone is having a heart attack, one does not take a
Dispirin, we rush them to hospital and intervene to the degree
necessary. Well, the Earth is having a heart attack. How has it been
manifesting itself? In climate change.  In ongoing loss of species, at
a rate so staggering that Edward Leakey and other folks refer to it as
the 6th mass extinction of species in history (the fifth was when the
dinosaurs were wiped out). In the loss of biodiversity. In peaking oil
production, which is imminent. In declining groundwater, deepening
across India. In stagnating food production. In polluted rivers. It
has been having this multi-pronged heart attack for a while; some very
respected folks talked about some aspects of it 20 years ago, some
even earlier. And what are we doing 20 years later? Turning our lights
out for an hour.

The second thing that bothers me is that the Delhi government is
actively involved in this. It promoted it last year. This year, the CM
Sheila Dixit is inaugurating the main programme at India Gate. She
heads the very government that is emitting tonnes of CO2 by spending
crores on useless events like the Commonwealth Games, that has been
cutting trees to widen roads for cars, and to build parking lots. The
Indian government’s policy for two decades has been completely
directed towards higher carbon emissions via consumption by the rich.

Governments and elites tend to play up such symbolic events to hide
the systemic nature of issues like climate change. By systemic I mean
the system of industrial capitalism, which is at its core. Unless we
take that head on, collectively, there’s no way that we are going to
be able to deal with climate change or any of the other ecological
crises it engenders.

So I’m not saying turning your lights out is a bad thing. I’m saying
one needs to do a lot, lot more. (And by that I mean us better-off;
the poor are anyhow consuming less and emitting less CO2 than is their
right.) At an individual or household level, doing more would mean
identifying all the daily things that consume a lot of energy, water,
etc. Taking the bus where possible instead of an auto or car, the
train instead of flying. Speed is bad. Cutting out or minimizing the
use of gadgets that consume high levels of electricity. It may make
life more boring for a while but there are no shortcuts to cutting
consumption. The elites promote shortcuts and call it energy
efficiency; it does not work.

Doing more also means doing things collectively. Now, that is not easy
in this fragmented world we live in. But there’s little option, as
that is possibly the key way large social change happens. If we want
the BRT bus corridor to extend beyond Moolchand, if you don’t want
trees cut in your neighbourhood to make way for car parks, if we all
want adequate water harvesting and cycle lanes, we need to get
together and make sure it happens. And all these things are only a
start if we want to intervene in large issues like climate change.
Switching off one’s lights is nice, but we need to do a hell of a lot
more. Urgently.

Nagraj Adve
26 March 2010