Large Fierce Mammal

“Earth Hour 2010″ occurs today, 27 March 2010, from 8:30 PM to 9:30 PM local time. That means wherever you are.

First taking place in 2007, Earth Hour is organized by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) for the stated purpose of raising world awareness of climate change by encouraging people and businesses to switch off all non-essential lights and appliances for those magical sixty minutes as an individual means of being, even if only for a short time, part of the solution instead of the problem. Taken at first glance, it all sounds grand and something everybody should unquestioningly want to be a part of. On deeper inspection however, it’s nothing more than a new suit for the Emperor.

While the organizers of Earth Hour hail every year so far as representative of snowballing success,  I believe the mere fact that the WWF found it necessary to even organize Earth Hour 2010 represents quite the opposite. After all, if the act of turning off all non-essential lights and appliances actually was effective in raising world awareness of humanity’s propensity to squander, why, three years down the road, do so many people still have non-essential lights and appliances running that need to be switched off yet again? What do these people do at 9:30 PM? Turn all this non-essential shit back on until next year?

As a species, humans live every day hell bent to shit where they sleep. If one of us finds himself better off than most, he has the option of shitting where somebody else who’s less well off sleeps, paying him a disposal fee as a generous contribution to his welfare, and maybe even buying a few fecal credits to relieve any lingering guilt.

No individual person, family, company, or even nation, can fix all the bad that’s done by the way human societies treat the Earth. What we all can do is clean up our act in our own little corner of it. Do a little research on what happens to any species in Nature that consumes more than its environment can sustain, and while you’re at it, marinate your mind in the fact that, in the scheme of things, we are nothing more than another species of wild animals absolutely co-dependent for survival on the integrity of our connection with every other living thing. We don’t own this place. We are not “Stewards of the Earth”, and governments giving lip service to “conserving” wild places and protecting “endangered” species of animals and plants so they can be “enjoyed by future generations” ignore the singular fact that, while Nature is the source of all joy in the most profound and fundamental sense, defining any part of it as having meaning only within the context of a human entertainment experience is trivializing in the extreme.

So don’t wait for 8:30 PM. Turn off everything non-essential right now and make a point of only consuming anything when there is a reason that doesn’t include laziness or stupidity. In the wild, Nature kills the lazy and stupid to improve the species, and whether you believe it or not, the wild is where you are right now.