Guest Post on Symbolic Gestures like ‘Earth Hour’

This posted was contributed by thetrajectory’s Guest Contributor Nagraj Adve. Nagraj is an activist with Delhi Platform, a non-funded organization active on issues linked to global warming. He has gladly agreed to share his views on “Earth Hour”, first carried on his friend’s blogsite Harri Batti. Contact him at: nagraj.adve@gmail.com

Earth Hour is upon us again. “Cities across the globe”, says an ad in the Hindustan Times, “will switch off lights between 8.30 pm and 9.30 pm.” Millions across the world will doubtless join in. I won’t be among them. 

Don’t get me wrong. Taken by itself, I’m not against symbolic acts such as these. For one, they take issues like climate change,  sustainability, urban consumption, energy saving, etc. to a whole lot of people, young and old, some of whom may possibly not have engaged with these issues before. Actually participating in such an event helps many people engage even more deeply. Two, by being observed across the world, it hints at the worldwide nature of some of these problems and the recognition that these issues are being debated all over. 

Having said that, events such as these may give many the feeling that they are doing something to save the environment when actually the direness and urgency of the crises suggest that a lot more need to be done. When someone is having a heart attack, one does not take a Dispirin, we rush them to hospital and intervene to the degree necessary. Well, the Earth is having a heart attack. How has it been manifesting itself? In climate change.  In ongoing loss of species, at a rate so staggering that Edward Leakey and other folks refer to it as the 6th mass extinction of species in history (the fifth was when the dinosaurs were wiped out). In the loss of biodiversity. In peaking oil production, which is imminent. In declining groundwater, deepening across India. In stagnating food production. In polluted rivers. It has been having this multi-pronged heart attack for a while; some very respected folks talked about some aspects of it 20 years ago, some even earlier. And what are we doing 20 years later? Turning our lights out for an hour. 

The second thing that bothers me is that the Delhi government is actively involved in this. It promoted it last year. This year, the CM Sheila Dixit is inaugurating the main programme at India Gate. She heads the very government that is emitting tonnes of CO2 by spending crores on useless events like the Commonwealth Games, that has been cutting trees to widen roads for cars, and to build parking lots. The Indian government’s policy for two decades has been completely directed towards higher carbon emissions via consumption by the rich. 

Governments and elites tend to play up such symbolic events to hide the systemic nature of issues like climate change. By systemic I mean the system of industrial capitalism, which is at its core. Unless we take that head on, collectively, there’s no way that we are going to be able to deal with climate change or any of the other ecological crises it engenders. 

So I’m not saying turning your lights out is a bad thing. I’m saying one needs to do a lot, lot more. (And by that I mean us better-off; the poor are anyhow consuming less and emitting less CO2 than is their right.) At an individual or household level, doing more would mean identifying all the daily things that consume a lot of energy, water, etc. Taking the bus where possible instead of an auto or car, the train instead of flying. Speed is bad. Cutting out or minimizing the use of gadgets that consume high levels of electricity. It may make life more boring for a while but there are no shortcuts to cutting consumption. The elites promote shortcuts and call it energy efficiency; it does not work.

Doing more also means doing things collectively. Now, that is not easy in this fragmented world we live in. But there’s little option, as that is possibly the key way large social change happens. If we want the BRT bus corridor to extend beyond Moolchand, if you don’t want trees cut in your neighbourhood to make way for car parks, if we all want adequate water harvesting and cycle lanes, we need to get together and make sure it happens. And all these things are only a start if we want to intervene in large issues like climate change. Switching off one’s lights is nice, but we need to do a hell of a lot more. Urgently.