EARTH HOUR 2019: ‘Be part of the solution, not the pollution’

“On one hand we have the moral responsibility to live in harmony with nature, on the other nature is vitally important to everyone’s daily lives; we depend on it for the food we eat, the air we breathe and the water we drink, and so much more. But we are pushing the planet to the limit and nature is severely under threat”

– Dr. Marco Lambertini

For 12 years, Earth Hour has raised awareness of climate change by submerging people into the darkness. Some people might wonder, how an hour of switching off the lights does. Honestly, it means more than we could ever imagine, not just for the environment but also for us.

Global warming, greenhouse effect, carbon emissions and many more are all serious problems we face today and they are getting out of hand as time passes by. Thousands of people united for a single cause at Circuit Events Grounds in Makati last Saturday, and that is by turning off the lights to show that they cared for Mother Earth.

With this year’s hashtag #Connect2Earth, World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) came up with the theme as a reminder of how important nature is and that the loss of biodiversity is a threat to mankind. WWF network also hopes to raise awareness that nature needs a wide variety of life to survive and thrive.

“On one hand we have the moral responsibility to live in harmony with nature, on the other nature is vitally important to everyone’s daily lives; we depend on it for the food we eat, the air we breathe and the water we drink, and so much more. But we are pushing the planet to the limit and nature is severely under threat,” said Marco Lambertini, Director General, WWF International. “Earth Hour 2019 is a powerful opportunity to start an unstoppable movement for nature to help secure an international commitment to stop and reverse the loss of nature – a New Deal for Nature and People as comprehensive and ambitious as the global climate deal.”

The nature has given us a lot of introspection and as we grow older we come into a realization that our love for nature was buried by all the conformities that fill our lives and hidden by what everyone else thought we should be doing. It’s impossible to not see all the devastation that has been unleashed on our earth’s environment, plaguing war on our ecosystems and not want to do something about it.

When we think about ‘nature’ we usually think of going for a forest walk. In reality, nature is everywhere – it’s the water we drink, the air we breathe and the food we eat but there is currently a worrying trend of nature loss as a direct consequence of human activity on the planet we all call home.

Nelson Mandela once said: “Any society which does not care for its children is no nation at all.” It’s strange that some of us do not see the beauty and treasure this world has to offer but we can be the generation to stop climate change. For too long, we have pushed it to the edge, in the name of “progress” and we all know, we can’t go on like this.