Have you ever participated in the world's largest climate action Earth Hour? Since the beginning, every year we have paid attention to that particular theme day, and for us the day represents the core of our environmental work.
What is Earth Hour?
Earth Hour is anything but an event on social media where you share that you turned off the lights. The day is the largest climate action that takes place globally to send signals to the world's leaders that something must be done about the climate. It creates debate and aims to demonstrate that the climate crisis is a fact and that without climate and biological diversity, humans will not remain on this planet in the future.
Why does Earth Hour exist?
Did you know that the first Earth Hour was in Sydney in 2007 at the initiative of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)? Since then, the event has become a global action that engages many people. Örebro was the first city to participate in the campaign and since then more companies, organizations and cities have participated.
The World Wide Fund for Nature is the obvious organizer of the day when many of our climate threats can be saved by working for a global balance in nature. If we correct natural areas around the world, of course the climate threat will not immediately stop. But the actions we need to take as humans are directly linked to ultimately restoring what we have today taken from mother earth.
Please read more about this here
What do you do during Earth Hour?
The idea is that Earth Hour should be a climate action that many people can take part in and that will have a big effect if everyone jumps on the bandwagon. So the only thing you do during Earth Hour to pay attention to the event is to turn off all the lights in your house, business or workplace at a certain time on a certain day.
If you then choose to get more involved, there is guaranteed to be a lot you can come up with to tackle the climate problems.
When is Earth Hour?
The day always falls on the last Saturday in March. It runs from 20:30-21:30 here in Sweden, so hopefully you've already turned it off at home.
What happens at different degrees?
It is the so-called greenhouse effect that contributes to the climate getting warmer every second. What contributes to the greenhouse effect is more than just a thing today. In summary, it can be said that it is the way we humans live and use the planet that is the biggest contributing factor.
It has long been phased for us to reach 1° warming, which leads to record heat which leads to the melting of the Arctic, causing drought and loss of growth, extreme forest fires in more places in the world, increased number of storms and floods, reduced number of vertebrates and coral reefs dying. Now this is no longer feared ⎯ this is now our reality in which we have lived during at least the last four years which have been the warmest ever recorded. The figure being phased in for now is 2°, which is also the ceiling for the Paris Agreement. However, the trend right now is that we are moving towards 3° warming.
+2°
- The Arctic will probably melt completely in the summer
- 2 million are exposed to water shortages in northern Europe
- 30% risk safe access to food in Africa and Asia
- 60% more forest fires in the Mediterranean area
- Extreme heat waves increase by over 300%
- Coral reefs are dying out completely
+3°
You can read more about what happens at three degrees here . Importantly, at 3° some of the effects that will take place around the planet are irreversible.
Get a handle on your climate footprint!
There are several different ways to find out what your carbon footprint looks like, but we would like to recommend the app Deedster. With the app, you can first and foremost calculate your footprint. Don't be surprised if you are shocked by the results, but sit down and take a few breaths. You can make small changes that ultimately have a big impact. A sustainable lifestyle is around 1 ton of CO2 e in emissions per year.
In the app, you can then challenge friends, family or colleagues by doing various "deeds" to reduce carbon dioxide emissions You download it here.
Sources:
Wikipedia , Earth Hour , WWF
