You may remember that 29 March was Earth Hour. That was the night as many of us as feasible were going to turn off our lights, to use as little electricity as possible for just one hour, to ease the strain on Mother Nature, to give her a little helping hand; “little” being the operative word here. So it was interesting to see in our vicinity how few people bothered to make any sort of effort: tenants in dozens of flats with their TV sets on, hundreds of lights blazing cheerfully inside. I had to wonder whether these people could have forgotten the impact of load shedding so easily. The Naval Hill lights shone brightly, too.
My wife and I sat meditating, the room lit by a pair of candles. That was when I began to think about the responsibility humankind has to have towards the planet. Most of the time, however, humankind is singularly irresponsible in its rapacious exploitation of the earth’s resources. It crossed my mind that we are a particularly short-sighted species, much like the small bat that flew into our place the night after Earth Hour.
We are competing frantically to make more and more technology that relies on electricity. These technologies will be bought (or thieved) and used by an ever-increasing number of people, yet, at the same time, we know that the reserves of the fossil fuels needed for the generation of electricity are finite and not boundless. Nonetheless, we continue to behave as if they were. And we know the miserable consequences of wet coal on electricity generation, don’t we? Darkness. Withdrawal agonies of no internet access. The incapacitating symptoms of not being able to watch the Oscar trial. Serious illnesses, these, both physically and psychologically!
Anyway, Earth Hour came and went. The noble few – bless them! – did their crucial bit to cherish this amazing planet while trying save it from the exploitative, unsympathetic many who, as usual, did nothing. However, we’d do well to remember that the earth we are creating will be the earth we’re returned to eventually.