Evaluating the Environmental Impact of Earth Hour Initiatives

This essay critically analyzes the annual Earth Hour initiative, examining its purported benefits in relation to climate change and energy saving. The introduction highlights the event's widespread participation and stated goals of promoting solidarity and awareness. However, the essay argues that Earth Hour presents a shallow representation of environmental action and may even have negative consequences, such as potentially increasing CO2 emissions due to increased energy demand during the event. It explores the practical limitations of the initiative, such as the inconvenience of switching off essential technologies and the minimal impact on overall CO2 emissions. The essay further argues that Earth Hour may distract from more effective solutions by focusing on symbolic gestures rather than substantive change, and it examines the role of renewable energy sources, the challenges associated with their implementation, and the need for innovative approaches to address climate change and promote sustainable energy practices. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of pursuing realistic and effective strategies for environmental protection and energy conservation, and it stresses the need to innovate new alternatives for fuel and solve other pollution issues in a new way.

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Introduction
One hundred twenty-eight nations and territories experienced Earth Hour for the first
time in 2010. Eighty-nine national capitals, and nine of the ten most prominent cities in the
country, were interested, along with thousands more, numerous businesses and hundreds of
millions of people. This year's event The organizers of the annual Earth Hour call for all the
people to take part in a public display of solidarity for climate change and energy saving in
general, to turn lights and many other non-essential devices off. The organizers claim they
deliver a way of expressing their desire to 'do something' regarding global warming.
However, the truth is that Earth Hour demonstrates all the wrong lessons and raises CO2
emissions (Jechow, 2019). The shallow representation shows just what is wrong with today's
environmentally friendly-feeling. Earth Hour tells us that it is easy to live with global change.
But, what we do is find things easier to see by shutting off the lamps. Nonetheless, to grasp
the broader Earth Hours phenomenon that has taken effect all these years, the real advantages
or downside of Earth Hour must be known.
Earth Hour Analysis
It is remarkable, however, that citizens are not required to switch off some utterly
inconvenient technology. Technologies like such as heating, air conditioning, television
systems, machine, cell phone, or any of the countless technologies that depend on cheap, high
energy power, and that allow modern life. If the lights turned off every hour, CO2 pollution
from power plants across the world would be lowered hypothetically. Even if all the people in
the world will remove all domestic illumination and that will contribute absolutely to a
decrease in CO2, this is equivalent to China's CO2 output would be lowered for less than four
minutes. Earth Hour will lead pollution to rise: the modest reduction in power use will not. If
less oil is injected through the system and does thus not decrease pollution (Lomborg, 2020).
Moreover, a significant decrease in energy demand during Earth Hour would imply a drop in

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the sum of CO2 production per hour, although that would be balanced by the increase in
power supply from gas and coal stations. The warm, renewable, and environmentally
sustainable candles that are being lit by a variety of participants are fossil fuels and are
around 100 times smaller than incandescent bulbs. Even the potential CO2 reduction may be
reduced by having a candle for each of the switched-out bulbs; two candles imply that an
individual produce more CO2.
Electricity has provided immense advantages to humanity. Nearly three billion people
also use conventional indoor droppings, pieces of wood, or other fuel to cook and to stay
warm. This occurrence creates poisonous fumes, which kill approximately two million people
every year, mostly children and women. Similarly, just one hundred years earlier, during the
cold months, the typical American families spent six hours shoving 6 tons of coal into the
kiln, washing up the carbon dust of tapestries, mobilizes, and bed-clothes (Karyotakis et al.,
2019). Electric ovens and heaters in the developing world today have prohibited air emissions
from indoors.
Electricity has also helped us to mechanize a significant part of our planet and to
avoid the most retrogressive jobs. Women spent hours holding water and pounding clothes on
washing sheets, produced by the washing machine. The refrigerator encouraged virtually all
to consume more fruit and vegetables and avoid consuming red foods. It is a critical
explanation for the highest prevalence of men's cancer in the USA during 1930. However,
stomach cancer is at the lowest prevalence level in recent times. Also, solar power and wind
each produce a slight fraction of the electricity required by humanity — 0.7% from wind and
only 0.1% from the sun (Fernandez et al., 2016). At present, these innovations are too costly.
They are often unfaithful because no one understands what to do when the wind doesn't
whistle. The International Energy Agency even predicts that by 2035, we will only generate

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2.4% of our electricity from the air and 0.8% from solar power. However, this is a possibility
only with ambitious assumptions.
Conclusion
Finally, it can be concluded that the facts are in relevance to all the humanity of the
world, and not only for the world's poor. Due to rising renewable subsidies energy rates,
800,000 German families are unable to afford their power bills anymore (Hoffarth & Hodson,
2016). The UK currently has more than five million residents living in fuel poverty, and the
regulator of energy openly fears that in fewer than nine months, renewable goals could
contribute to blackouts. We cannot dive into despair if we want a prosperous life for humans
and our world. To address climate change by shutting off light strategy will surely not work,
humanity does not need solutions like these. What we need to do is really innovate new
alternatives for fuel and solve other pollution issues in a new way.

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References
Fernandez, M., Piccolo, L. S., Maynard, D., Wippoo, M., Meili, C., & Alani, H. (2016, May).
Talking climate change via social media: communication, engagement and behaviour.
In Proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Web Science (pp. 85-94).
Hoffarth, M. R., & Hodson, G. (2016). Green on the outside, red on the inside: Perceived
environmentalist threat as a factor explaining political polarization of climate
change. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 45, 40-49.
Jechow, A. (2019). Observing the impact of WWF earth hour on urban light pollution: A case
study in Berlin 2018 using differential photometry. Sustainability, 11(3), 750.
Karyotakis, M. A., Kiourexidou, M., & Veglis, A. (2019). Media web-sites environmental
communication: operational practices and news coverage. World of Media, 44.
Lomborg, B. (2020). The whole idea of Earth Hour is not too bright. National Post. Retrieved
4 April 2020, from https://nationalpost.com/opinion/bjorn-lomborg-the-whole-idea-
of-earth-hour-is-not-too-bright.