As Eli James pointed out (thanks, man!), Boston’s The Big Picture’s compilation of Earth Hour ’09 photos around the world is easily the best one out there. =D

I’m not that picky of how WWF played out their advertising campaign, be it with celebrity endorsements or not. Actually I figured the celebrities did the ads voluntarily. After all, WWF is a charity. =)

Ha, I like the phrase ‘knocking some sense into us egotistical humans’. I agree! That is also what I believe Earth Hour is set out to achieve.

About your Breeze Mag Launching event — it certainly sounds great. Too bad the list was already full. Anyway, I wasn’t sure if I could make it because I had something on that same day. =( Thanks a bunch for the invitation though!

I’m surprised you haven’t heard of Earth Hour this year. It’s okay if you missed flicking off your lights — its the message behind the act that is important. Although you can always take part next year! =D

April fools this year for me was rather uneventful. Sigh. =(

Hmm. Well so you guys are arguing based on the idea — or assumption — that Earth Hour wouldn’t make an impact despite the hefty spending and wasteful manner of celebrating and organising it. Do you have the statistics to back up that assumption? Note that I’m not saying that I have solid facts that Earth Hour did its job, I don’t, and I’m also sure you don’t have any that says Earth Hour “made a small impact”.. So why the lack of faith?

You’re assuming here, now, that the general population (or those that bothered) celebrated Earth Hour and went back to their old ways without a twitch in their approach towards changing their habits in tackling Global Warming. Hence your assumption that Earth Hour made only a small impact.

Can I assume the same for Earth Hour 2007 when “major corporations pledged support and promised to slash emissions” — which you seem to have so much faith in — how many corporations are still keeping their pledges until now, 2 Earth Hours later? Can you be sure some of them haven’t revert to their old ways? The WWF certainly wouldn’t have the manpower to conduct audits on corporations on whether they kept their pledges or not. So those corporations might ease on their ‘going green’ pledges over time.

We certainly hope that isn’t the case but see how I effectively downplayed Earth Hour 2007 by just showing my lack of faith in their pledges? That’s exactly how you guys downplayed Earth Hour’s effectiveness by showing the lack of faith in humankind to change their ways.

When you realise Earth Hour could’ve made a larger impact that you had initially thought, you’ll realise that the means and effort to organise Earth Hour are worth it — in a way. Of course, I don’t very much agree the concerts and stuff, but I figured the WWF have little or no control over how commercial entities decide to celebrate their Earth Hour. Even so, perhaps the WWF figured it would be worth the extra hype and measures to ensure Earth Hour a memorable event for the people.

After all, it’s really hard to organise a large scale event without sucking up a tonne of juice. (While we’re at concerts — check out how Melbourne powered theirs with bikes. Perhaps one of many examples of how large-scale events can be energy-saving.) Other than that, the WWF’s intentions are, without a doubt, good.

I do think that it’s a little unnecessary to have celebrity endorsement for such environmental initiatives, but if the celebrities are endorsing because of what they belief the message will help Earth and not because of how much they’re paid to say so, I have no qualms about that.

Anyway, i love the photo of the swicth!

“FoOie: (this was a reply on kamigoroshi.net to one of the comments) At the end of the day, what I understand from what you’re saying is that we have to spend more money to make a very small impact, which is essential the gist of your argument seeing how much people spend on things like Earth Hour for the sake of a handful of people who may change their lifestyle because of it. That to me and to plenty of other people who take conservation seriously, is pretty wasteful to begin with. We’re not blaming Earth Hour at all, we’re pointing out the problem that Earth Hour poses to the actual environment. The loss of the real message, the perversion of the spirit of it, all for the sake of some elitist idea that saving the planet can be cool.”

Also, Minishorts:

““I support educating our youth about this thing called global warming. but you know, I get newsletters every month from the WWF because I once donated 30 USD at one of their counters. EVERYMONTH without fail I get a two page, colour printed on ‘recycled’ paper plea, telling me about trees being cut down for paper, animals losing their homes, telling me they need my money to save more trees, asking me to pledge more. I’ve sworn I would donate elsewhere but not to the WWF. Because I don’t believe in people sending paper to me, lots and lots of it, and then telling me that I need to save paper in those very same coloured print outs.””

Now I don’t have any of their experiences, but I can identify with the hypocrisy of the entire event. It felt better focused back in 2007, when even major corporations pledged support and promised to slash emissions (imagine that!). And while I’m skeptical about Global Warming as a rallying cry, I think that any effort to increase responsible consuming is a great thing. This, however — all the concerts and the dinners and the special deals — isn’t.