The Symbolic Power of Earth Hour

When I first heard of Earth Hour, it struck me as a somewhat naive and misguided social event for bringing awareness to the issue of climate change. The whole idea of turning out the lights for an hour as a "gesture" for taking action to reduce carbon emissions seems similar to the idea of making a charitable donation at year-end as a "gesture" for taking action on the charitable cause of one's choice. Little is asked of us; in neither case is a change of on-going behavior required. Both actions use enlightened self-interest in the form of a personal economic reward to participate

But earlier today, I saw a news story about Google's home page going "black" as its way of shining the light of awareness on Earth Hour. And then it struck me that the most important decisions in our culture today seem to be based increasingly on symbols that are media-driven. I clicked over to Google's home page, and there it was! The black background was definitely dramatic, and a specific call to action was only one click away: "you can do something to reduce the energy consumption of your home PC by joining the Climate Savers Computing Initiative." Simple. And powerfully symbolic.

At first, some of the online criticism of Google for not doing something more substantive (like perhaps taking their site offline for an hour?) seemed compelling. But there would be no symbolic message in that. Users would just assume/fear that Google was actually down, and THAT would be the story getting the attention! So, what about just a flat html page with the links to Climate Savers Computing Initiative? They could have done that. But then those Google users who became interested and curious would not be able to learn more by using the search engine, and perhaps an opportunity to engage them when they were most open to it would be lost. It will be interesting to see how Earth Hour ranks in Google Trends (as of this posting "earth hour chicago" and "lights out" were #14 and #28, respectively) as Earth Hour quickly approaches the West Coast of the U.S.

Will Earth Hour make a difference in terms of changing public policy and laws to require greater due diligence in considering the impacts of certain behaviors on the climate and the world's inhabitants -- all  of them?  So far, rational appeals based on logic and science have failed to do so. Maybe the modern version of a flower placed in the muzzle of a rifle is exactly the kind of symbol we need now.