Earth Hour: Domestic Perspective

Wikipedia define Earth Hour as;

Earth Hour is an annual international event created by the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature/World Wildlife Fund), held on the last Saturday of March, that asks households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights and electrical appliances for one hour to raise awareness towards the need to take action on climate change. It was pioneered by WWF Australia and the Sydney Morning Herald in 2007, and achieved worldwide participation in 2008.

Earth Hour aim to earn around 1 billion people to participate in their program and switch off their lights as a support of the global warming issue to the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009.

For the first time in history, people of all ages, nationalities, race and background have the opportunity to use their light switch as their vote – Switching off your lights is a vote for Earth, or leaving them on is a vote for global warming. WWF are urging the world to VOTE EARTH and reach the target of 1 billion votes, which will be presented to world leaders at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009.

Personally, i found it very interesting that Earth Hours got lots of attention all around the world and especially this small town Kota Kinabalu in Sabah too. It might be a good idea to switch off the lights for an hour to make a point to the world leader that our earth need their attention and solution for the global warming that we experience lately. I hope our vote count in when the world leader seen the effort that we especially in most of town in Malaysia especially Kota Kinabalu.

Power supply became a top issue in Sabah. Unlike in the peninsular, we experience black out at least 2 times a week for average 3-4 hours. In short, Earth Hour(s) every 2 or 3 times a week. Every time black out occurs, we curse the power supplier and the state government for its very bad services. Even when the power is on, i find it in a certain hour late night, the power supply become unstable and the UPS connected to the computer seems to giving out warning until the computer has to shut down automatically.

I read and see advertisement from the WWF and NatGeo and Discovery channel in Astro with the participation from the local artist the awareness to the global issues that take part globally. Malaysia has been flooded with lots of global nature issue from the global warming, carbon release, the rain forest destruction and the animal extinct but none was getting attention from our government. Sabah experiences the low power supply due to the growing demand to the electricity for development and new township.

Earth Hour came in a bit bizarre situation in Sabah. For many years, sabahan never stop complaining of the power blackout and the government always trying to avoid responsibilities by advocating a new power generator station. One suggestion is to use coal as the fuel to generate the electricity when ridiculously we're next to the biggest dam in the south East Asia. Bakun Dam is still in progress to finish but the governments decide not to supply the excessive energy to sabah and instead suggest building a new power generator station.

I wonder if Earth Hour can change our Malaysian politician mind no matter the Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat. At the moment, i don't see any strong view from both leading party about the environmental issues that has been debated for many years. The deforestation of the Sabah natural forest by those greedy local politicians to the uncontrollable pollution by those greedy factory owners and the showing of the Malaysian state of mental and their ignorance of the global issue compare to the local reality issue.

I believe there are more issues that needed attention beside this international gimmick by the western country that only serve their own environmental propaganda. Malaysian should be more aware not just the international issue but the local issue no matter it is an environmental issue or social and political issues. All of them deserved an equal attention from the local non government organization rather than piggy back on the international awareness that doesn’t makes any changes to our domestic socio politic and environmental issues.

The state and federal government should take more active role to the environmental issue especially the global warming by enforce a tight regulation over the deforestation and pollution by big local and international corporate. Malaysian should take its own action and awareness to push the government and the opposition to make environmental issue as it main major propaganda to gain support from the people. Education about the environmental awareness should be advocated at early education if we want to make changes. This will create a new waves of society that aware of the environmental impact of their own lifestyle and living in a energy efficient life without giving out effect that will pollute the nature overall.