Ten percent less?

In the last few months, I’m guessing you’ve come across an advertising campaign such as this one:

http://evolve.ergon.com.au/10Less.aspx

I think it’s rather misleading when the privatised energy industry runs ads encouraging domestic consumers to cut their usage. Come again? Do they expect me to believe that they genuinely want to see a ten percent reduction in residential usage? Surely that would mean a ten percent reduction in profits in that sector as well. That’s got to be a massive amount of cash. I honestly doubt any company in western society would *actually* want or expect this to come true.

In my view it’s just a PR exercise. In this post-Inconvenient Truth world, corporations of all kinds have scrambled to incorporate feel-good green symbolism into their reams of sanitised, unrealistic policy.

I have a hunch they know people won’t voluntarily cut their energy consumption by anywhere near enough to have any impact on climate change or their profits.

It peeves me a little that while industry, transportation and agriculture spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere on extraordinary levels, energy retailers get all patronising and tell residential consumers to cut their usage. I’d wager industrial and commercial usage of electricity would outstrip residential by quite a margin. This business of turning off lights when you’re not in the room is fair enough, but it’s unrealistic to believe it’s going to make a difference to the big picture. Unless of course it’s just one mini component of a giant, well executed scheme to bring shit under control and avert oblivion. Which, unlike many of my peers, I reckon would be pretty achievable if people hardened the f*ck up and accepted that a pay-to-pollute scheme would discourage pollution and encourage investment in clean, renewable technology.

“But my bill will go up, aye?”

“I dig coal out of the ground, I expected to have a job forever. Now you wanna put me out of a job. You greenie sons of bitches”

If that’s your attitude, learn to swim.

Anyway. Speaking of feel good symbolism, the idea of a few thousand residents turning off the lights in their home for one hour, on one day out of three hundred and sixty-five is patently ridiculous. Even on a symbolic level.

Yup, its that time of year again.When I first heard of Earth Hour, I was initially quite skeptical of the concept.

Surely I could be forgiven for that though. Pretty sure that the coal fired power station is going to continue consuming just as much coal, and polluting just as much for the entire duration of the “earth hour”. They can’t just turn em on and off, it takes hours to get them on and offline.

So what the hell does this achieve? Well today I read this article, and it made me a little less cynical:

“THE NSW Government has backed calls for Earth Hour to be viewed as a referendum on greenhouse gas cuts and be taken into account at an international climate change summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, this year”

The idea that millions of individuals can gain the attention of populist governments and instigate a real, an actual shift in paradigm and pave the way for a brighter, more sensible future is incredibly appealing to me. I might be idealistic, but it’s better than the alternative..