Millions of people around the world turned off lights (and other electrical appliances) for one hour on Saturday to show their support for action on climate change.
Earth Hour, a WWF initiative, was supported by individuals as well as businesses, corporations and authorities, with lights going out in homes, public spaces and on world-famous landmarks.
But is it enough? The short answer is no! Turning off the lights for an hour was a protest on a global scale and sent a message to world leaders ahead of the UN Conference in Copenhagen later this year, but we need to do more if we’re serious about having an effect on climate change.
Turning off the lights, in itself, will have little impact on CO2 emissions as we continue to pump millions of tonnes into the atmosphere each day.
So what else can we do?
We shouldn’t leave it to the politicians, we need to take responsibility for our own actions and act now to reduce our impact on the environment.
We could write a list, 10 pages long, of the things we can all do to make a difference but instead we found a graphic, in the form of a mind-map, you can use as wallpaper on your desktop to remind you of what you can do to help save the planet.
Click on the image (above) for a full-size version which you can save to your computer and put on your desktop (if you decide to print it be sure to use recycled paper and consider the electricity it will use).
You can also check out our list of ‘10 things you can do to help save the planet‘ for some quick and easy tips you can put into practice today! Don’t just leave it at Earth Hour – and don’t leave it to the politicians. Act now!
Tell us what you’re doing
We’d love to hear what you’re doing to reduce your impact on the planet and shrink your carbon footprint. Read what others have said and share your ideas by leaving a comment.
6 comments… read them below or add yours now
We love this map for its scope and message. However, in your section on consuming less, you don’t also have anything on encouraging reuse, recycling or composting.
Reducing your use of resources is crucial. This should include buying things without excessive – or indeed any – packaging, not buying new furniture or gadgets, using a library (for more than books!) instead of buying new. And where necessary reusing your own or others’ resources instead of new and virgin materials.
Please let’s take our consumption of resources into consideration, because climate change is a symptom of a greater disease and at some point in the future we won’t have any new resources to rely on…
This is an awesome graphic! Thanks for the reminder that we can’t just stop at Earth Hour! We can all make a huge difference, collectively, with our daily decisions, not just once a year for one hour.
I love the “mind-map” thingy… it’s a really helpful reminder of what we can do keep saving the planet after Earth Hour. I put it on my desktop like you suggested. Thanks :)
This is a really helpful article to keep attention on the subject. I think Earth Hour helped raise awareness of the issues and causes of climate change. Since then I’ve been much more conscious of turning off electrical appliances and looking at other ways to reduce our carbon footprint.
that map sure is something, it helps me to understand that there’s more than just Earth Hour..
hopefully, next we won’t face “Air-Hour” (let’s hold our breath for an hour?)
@LCRN: Welcome to Green Pepper and thanks for sharing your views! I should point out that we’re not responsible for the mind-map graphic featured here, it was made available online and may be lacking in some areas, in terms of the action we can all take. I couldn’t agree more with you about reducing consumption – it’s a central theme on Green Pepper and features heavily in many of our articles (check out the Tag Cloud if you were in any doubt). And, of course, we don’t just advocate reducing consumption in our articles (and the link to Story of Stuff on every page), we practice it too, in our daily lives.
@Tom, @Katy, @Alice Letheren: Thanks for your comments. Glad you found the article and the mind-map graphic useful.
@nichive: Welcome to Green Pepper and thanks for sharing your views! Glad you found the graphic useful too ;-)