Earth Hour Reflections on President Obama’s Inauguration
This site is meant to be about The Good Life. Today’s posting aims to talk about Canadians’ engagement with Earth Hour– not the incredible hopes being placed on the shoulders of their neighbour’s new head of state.
But Earth Hour, too, is all about hope. It’s about millions of people—perhaps as many as a billion all over the world – joining together in the symbolic act of turning off their lights for one hour to show they’re worried about climate change. They wouldn’t be doing this if they didn’t believe climate change could be solved, just as millions of people would not have tuned in to watch Obama’s inauguration if they didn’t truly hope the new American President might allay their fears for the future.
I watched the speech in a roomful of people who cheered when Obama bluntly admitted: “The ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threatens our planet.” They took that to mean that the new President really did understand the menace of climate change – and was promising to do something about it.
They believed him.
I think that’s the discovery the woman in the coffee shop surprised herself by making. She was saying she believed the new U.S. administration would indeed have the boldness and vision to weave renewable energy into a new 21st century, post-carbon economy.
She was also, I suspect, expressing her views about the lack of such vision in Canada.
Which brings me back to Earth Hour. If Earth Hour is about hope, it’s also about action. It’s about millions of Canadians sending Parliament a message that, from now on, they’re expecting far-sighted leadership from Ottawa, too.
Sign up, and we’ll help deliver the message.