Earth Hour Everyday

At 8:30 PM on Saturday 26th March 2011, lights were switched off around the globe for Earth Hour although in Nagaland it was not so much the people but the government, which did the honours of shutting down power courtesy the Power Department. The problem with such a scenario where something is forced upon the people is that we fail miserably to create the awareness and encourage voluntary action which is so important to achieve a stated goal or objective. And that could be a reason why we have failed to bring about that positive transformation in our lives and society. People have become lethargic—they are not moved to take up challenges confronting us. Our people have become overly dependent on the State government to provide us everything from jobs, quotas, subsidized food & fuel, free education, healthcare etc. This negative trend has to be reversed if we want to grow and progress as a people. The Power Department on its part by forcing the earth hour on the people has lost a good opportunity to sensitize our people about climate change and what needs to be done not just for earth hour but more importantly beyond as well where we have to live and act responsibly to protect our planet.
In response to this year’s annual observation of earth day on March 26, 2011 Saturday, an interesting and insightful article appeared in the local dailies written by a concerned citizen. According to the article in question, commemorating such an event as earth hour will be more meaningful if people voluntarily switch off their lights during the allotted time. He was obviously referring to last year (and this year), when the Power department switched off the lights. The writer then goes on to explain that as a result, people started burning candles, running generators, invertors, and various batteries run electric gadgets including burning fossil fuels (woods) that is readily available in our Naga homes. The very purpose of having earth hour was therefore defeated. The important point is that the power department should not switch off the lights but leave it to the judgment of the consumers to switch it off at their own will -those non-essential lights and other gadgets not only on Earth hour for 1 hr but inculcate the culture to the masses to implement this 24 hours a day every week throughout the year. For the Nagas this will be a better way of contributing our bit towards climate change mitigation. In fact creating awareness and voluntary action will be more sustainable in the long run.
The other point that the writer has tried to rationalize is this—what is the point of switching off the lights when there is no electricity! In fact going at the rate in which our load shedding takes place every few hours in a day, Nagas will be contributing many earth hours for the sake of humanity. We don’t need to tell the World Wide Fund (WWF) to remind us about observing the annual earth hour. Nagaland State and its people are doing yeoman service through our record breaking earth hours every year especially during this time of year. Therefore the argument goes that we can “observe the earth hour only when we can afford to have electricity in our homes, schools, streets, offices, industries”. Until that time earth hour has no significance. As delightfully surmised by the writer “please Earth Hour later…First Power to the people”.