There are 8,760 hours in a year, and for just one of them – just one – on Saturday 28th March at 8:30pm, WWF are asking us to switch off our lights for Earth Hour.
Because I am a Cisco EN Director, you might think I am going to ask you to support Earth Hour so that I can then sell you our energy-saving networking technologies like Joulex and Energywise. As Director of IoE, you may think I am asking you to support Earth Hour so I can then explain in great detail how much less energy the planet will consume when everything is connected to the internet and thus can be switched off automatically when not needed,
But no, I am not going to do that, or talk about our technology here (sorry Marketing). Because I am not asking you to support Earth Hour for Cisco. I am asking you to support Earth Hour for the 25% of animal species at risk of extinction due to global warming. I am asking you to switch off your lights for the 1.2 billion people in the world today who have never even seen a light switch because they live without electricity. I am asking you to support it for the already malnourished people in Africa who’s food yield could decline by as much as 50% by 2050 as climate change and floods impact farming, while at the same time dramatically increasing their rate of Malaria.
And yes, of course, I am asking you to do it for the polar bears. Imagine the entire land mass of Great Britain vanished. Where would we all live? That’s not something we need to think about at 8:30pm on Saturday night as we sit cosily at home. If only the polar bears were as lucky. Unfortunately, 400,000 square miles of their home – an area 4.5 times the size of Great Britain – has already melted, due to the global warming which we caused.
If it seems like an inconvenience, here are some examples of what else will happen in that one hour:- 4 elephants will get shot for their ivory, 1080 people will die of starvation, 60 children will die because they have no access to clean water, and an area of rainforest the size of TEN Hyde Parks will be cut down.
So, here’s another thought – if we switched off every light bulb in the world for that one hour, we would save enough money (£60million) to buy 1200 anti-poaching drones to save the elephants, or to buy a meal for a third of the starving people in developing countries, or to build enough wells to supply clean water to 30 million of children in Africa, or we could rebuild 60 rainforest corridors and give these guys back some of their home…
So, please, for just one hour, please support the World Wildlife Fund and whatever you do on Saturday night, do it with the lights off.
Read more about Earth Hour here.
And to sign up and give your support, click here.
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Note from the blogging team: And it’s not just switching your lights off, you can find out more about #FishFace in support of Earth hour in Nicki’s blog here, but in the meantime take a look at some of the Cisco team from around Europe getting involved:
The Cisco team supporting #FishFace – moving clockwise: Walter Merkl, Austria, Virtual Sales Manager – Central Region, Santiago Herranz, Spain, Virtual Sales Manager – South Region, Kim Pasche, Netherlands, Director of GVS, Simon Frewin, UK, Account Manager and Sarah Eccleston, Director, Enterprise Networks and IoT, UK&I
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