by Rene V. Carbayas
ZAMBOANGA CITY, Apr 2 (PIA) – Hundreds of sky lanterns were released in batches to the skies of Zamboanga City at Paseo del Mar on Saturday (March 31) marking the city’s participation to the world-wide observance of Earth Hour 2012.
Every major city in the world, including those in the Philippines, shut down power for an hour from 8:30 to 9:30 in the afternoon on March 31 in the global effort to raise awareness about climate change.
“Switching off power for an hour may not save the planet, if the intention was merely to save power,” Jovi, an advocate of Earth Hour said. He said many are skeptical about this idea, including him, but still believes that skepticism is still part of the debate and “this created awareness.”
Jovi brought his family at Paseo del Mar as part of their Saturdays night outing. He said that Saturday was special because his family, especially his 2 children ages seven and fourteen, will get to experience Earth Hour observance. “I guess this is the first time Zamboanga will use sky lanterns as part of the observance.”
“I have little faith on how the organizers would use the event to spread awareness and really awaken people on the urgency of doing concrete response to save the planet,” he said, saying that releasing into the atmosphere another carbon-emitting lantern is somehow strange and confusing for him.
More so, he said “there goes the garbage produced out of the event, the plastic packaging of the lanterns, the lanterns themselves that will eventually go back to earth as trash somewhere.”
For a staunch advocate of Earth Hour, Jovi said he was a bit confused. “I guess by way of the lanterns, the city government wanted to keep the people and the crowd together for that hour. The lanterns are visually delightful but how they impacted on the crowd to do something to save the planet is not certain.”
Students and young people were also in the crowd. Most of them were excited to participate especially in lighting the lanterns. In conversations with some students, many of them are sufficiently aware of the observance saying that switching-off power for an hour is a conscious effort to save electricity.“For me lighting and releasing the sky lantern into the sky is a symbol of hope,” Sandy, a student of a local school here said. “It is my voice raised to the skies telling those who would see my lantern from a far that I need my home, my earth for my future.”
For what it’s worth, Jovi believes sky lanterns can still bring the message and stir debate. He said that what is important is for organizers to be challenged with more meaningful and impacting observance of Earth Hour in the coming years.
Earth Hour is a worldwide event organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and held on the last Saturday of March annually, encouraging households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights for one hour to raise awareness about the need to take action on climate change. The event, conceived by WWF and The Sydney Morning Herald, first took place in 2007, when 2.2 million residents of Sydney participated by turning off all non-essential lights. Following Sydney's lead, many other cities around the world adopted the event in 2008.
Since then, Earth Hour has grown to become what environmental group WWF organizers say is the world’s largest demonstration of support for action on carbon pollution. WWF noted that the main goal of Earth Hour is to create awareness around climate change issues and "to express that individual action on a mass scale can help change our planet for the better" and not about the specific energy reductions made during the hour being all that's required. (PIA-9 ZBST)
