As well-intentioned gestures go, Earth Hour is hard to beat. At the stroke of 8:30pm on Saturday, March 27, nearly 1 billion people in more than 120 countries demonstrated their desire to do something about global warming by switching off their lights for an hour.
In a show of official solidarity, the lights also went out at many of the planet’s most iconic landmarks, from the Sydney Opera House to the Great Pyramid at Giza, not to mention Beijing’s Forbidden City, New York’s Empire State Building, London’s Big Ben clock tower, Paris’ Eiffel Tower and the skylines of Hong Kong and Las Vegas.
Whatever else it may be, Earth Hour is surely one of the most successful publicity stunts ever dreamed up. First organized in Sydney in 2007 by the local chapter of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), its popularity and the level of participation, both individual and official, it generates has exploded in recent years — to the point that there is barely a corner of the earth that the campaign hasn’t touched.
As Greg Bourne, CEO of the WWF in Australia, put it: “We have everyone from Casablanca to the safari camps of Namibia and Tanzania taking part.”
But has Earth Hour actually done anything to halt — or even slow — global warming? Not so much.
The event’s popularity is not hard to fathom. Who but the most die-hard global-warming denier could resist the notion, as Earth Hour’s US Web site phrased it this year, that merely “by flipping off your lights on March 27 at 8:30pm local time you will be making the switch to a cleaner, more secure nation?”
Needless to say, this was not quite the case. The main thing that anyone accomplished by turning off the lights at night for an hour was to make it harder to see. The environmental impact was negligible. Indeed, even if everyone in the world had participated at the requisite hour, the result would have been the equivalent of turning off China’s carbon emissions for roughly 45 seconds.
Of course, this wildly optimistic calculation assumes that nobody used more power afterward. Recent research by two Canadian psychologists found that people who spent money on green products were, immediately afterward, less likely to be generous and more likely to steal than those who bought non-green stuff. Apparently doing something virtuous — like turning off the lights — makes us feel entitled to act badly.
The Earth Hour organizers acknowledged the symbolic nature of the exercise. Turning off the lights is just a “call to action,” they said.
As WWF director-general James Leape explained, it provides “a global platform for millions of people to voice their concern about the devastating effects of climate change.”
Added another WWF official: “It’s saying to our politicians, you can’t give up on climate change.”
All well and good. But according to Andy Ridley, Earth Hour actually has a more specific agenda than that. In addition to being the guy who first came up with the idea for the event over drinks with friends in a Sydney pub several years ago, Ridley is also the executive director of Earth Hour Global, so he presumably speaks with some authority on the subject.
“What we’re still looking for in this coming year,” he told The Associated Press last week, “is a global deal that encourages all countries to lower their emissions.”
Therein lies the big problem with Earth Hour. As much as we would like to believe otherwise, the fact is that carbon emissions won’t be lowered by a deal. If that were politically possible, it would have been done a long time ago — if not at the 1992 “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro, then in Kyoto 12 years later; and if not in Kyoto, then in Copenhagen in December. But it wasn’t.
Indeed, after nearly two decades of trying, the best climate deal that countries have been able to agree on is one that imposes no real obligations, sets no binding emissions targets, and requires no specific actions by anyone. Surely, there is a lesson here.
Alas, the organizers of Earth Hour prefer to ignore this inconvenient reality. But there is no getting around it. If we are serious about wanting to solve global warming, we need to take action that actually does good — as opposed to wasting valuable resources on empty agreements and moral posturing that merely make us feel good. Switching off our lights and promising to cut carbon emissions may make us feel momentarily virtuous, but that’s all it does.
A meaningful solution to global warming needs to focus on clean-energy research and development, instead of fixating on empty promises of reductions in carbon emissions. For just 0.2 percent of global GDP, or US$100 billion a year, we could bring about the game-changing technological breakthroughs that will be required to make green energy cheap enough to fuel a carbon-free future. So let’s stop stumbling around in the dark and do something meaningful for a brighter future.
Bjorn Lomborg is the director of think tank the Copenhagen Consensus Centre at Copenhagen Business School and the author of Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming.
COPYRIGHT: PROJECT SYNDICATE
Recently, China launched another diplomatic offensive against Taiwan, improperly linking its “one China principle” with UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 to constrain Taiwan’s diplomatic space. After Taiwan’s presidential election on Jan. 13, China persuaded Nauru to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Nauru cited Resolution 2758 in its declaration of the diplomatic break. Subsequently, during the WHO Executive Board meeting that month, Beijing rallied countries including Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Egypt, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Laos, Russia, Syria and Pakistan to reiterate the “one China principle” in their statements, and assert that “Resolution 2758 has settled the status of Taiwan” to hinder Taiwan’s
Can US dialogue and cooperation with the communist dictatorship in Beijing help avert a Taiwan Strait crisis? Or is US President Joe Biden playing into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) hands? With America preoccupied with the wars in Europe and the Middle East, Biden is seeking better relations with Xi’s regime. The goal is to responsibly manage US-China competition and prevent unintended conflict, thereby hoping to create greater space for the two countries to work together in areas where their interests align. The existing wars have already stretched US military resources thin, and the last thing Biden wants is yet another war.
As Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu’s party won by a landslide in Sunday’s parliamentary election, it is a good time to take another look at recent developments in the Maldivian foreign policy. While Muizzu has been promoting his “Maldives First” policy, the agenda seems to have lost sight of a number of factors. Contemporary Maldivian policy serves as a stark illustration of how a blend of missteps in public posturing, populist agendas and inattentive leadership can lead to diplomatic setbacks and damage a country’s long-term foreign policy priorities. Over the past few months, Maldivian foreign policy has entangled itself in playing
A group of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers led by the party’s legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (?) are to visit Beijing for four days this week, but some have questioned the timing and purpose of the visit, which demonstrates the KMT caucus’ increasing arrogance. Fu on Wednesday last week confirmed that following an invitation by Beijing, he would lead a group of lawmakers to China from Thursday to Sunday to discuss tourism and agricultural exports, but he refused to say whether they would meet with Chinese officials. That the visit is taking place during the legislative session and in the aftermath