Earth Hour – a wake up call
"It is great to see that businesses and households are prepared to take up the challenge of Earth Hour on Saturday night, because it shows that there is concern about climate change in our community and willingness to act," said Dr Foskey today.
"But it would be a catastrophe if people thought that this tokenistic act is enough. Even turning our lights off for an hour every week will not mitigate the impacts of climate change, but the annual Earth Hour is a good awareness raiser."
"The fuzzy feeling of involvement in this community event has to be translated into firm action. While house owners can make their houses more energy efficient through insulation, solar hot water services and low energy light globes, moving to low fuel consumption cars, governments have to provide incentives for them to do so."
"In the ACT, stationary energy use is our biggest contribution to greenhouse gases, and in a climate like ours, with extremes of heat and cold, our energy use will grow if we don't act to curb it now."
"For new homebuilders, this means regulations. An A.V. Jennings spokesperson recently announced that unless governments regulate, they can't dissuade clients from building energy guzzling new homes."
"I would like to see the Property Council joining AV Jennings in calling for greater regulation for energy efficiency, as well as turning off its lights for one hour."
"And I would like to see the ACT Government committing to regulating for green building. Unfortunately, we appear to be going backwards."
"The new Territory Plan says overshadowing by new houses of existing houses is okay if it allows for a minimum of three hours of sunlight in adjacent houses living areas. Clearly houses thus affected will find it hard to install solar hot water systems, leave their heaters off or benefit from solar feed-in tariffs."
"So let’s treat Earth Hour as a wake up call, and use its awareness raising potential to strengthen the ACT climate change strategy, so we can make a difference all year round," said Deb Foskey.
