Couple of weeks ago I read in some Jordanian Blog that Amman is going with the trend of turning the electricity off for an hour on the 28th of March. Between 8:30-9:30PM, all participants will turn of their lights as a sign of awareness. the initiative web site reads:"For the first time in history, people of all ages, nationalities, race and background have the opportunity to use their light switch as their vote – Switching off your lights is a vote for Earth, or leaving them on is a vote for global warming. WWF are urging the world to VOTE EARTH and reach the target of 1 billion votes, which will be presented to world leaders at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009."
The Jordanian official side decided to turn the lights off on few streets and to organize a candle march in Rainbow street. This event went unnoticed by most people and many environment advocates were disappointed. And most of the population knew nothing about it and probably won't participate even if they did.
Should we get disappointed by this outcome? You shouldn't!
Jordan ranks around 85 in the world consumption of energy per capita! So why would a Jordanian man turn the light off and use a candle (probably a more expensive thing to do) just to be involved in this global Hippocratic lets-share-the-guilt kind of act? The first way to solve a problem is to find the real causes, and in this case it wasn't us, then you need to use effective ways to solve it. Most of the nations involved are Democratic nations. So their leaders will only listen to their votes, in their national elections. Not some symbolic - immeasurable - act of turning your light off at night (many people sleep at that time by the way!).
Jordan needs environment awareness of its own problems such is recycling and water preservation. And if Jordanian pro-west and West-Amman based intelligentsia couldn't realize that, then they ought to be...disappointed...
4 comments:
Hmmmm..I kind of share the same opinion. I don't think anybody should be disappointed, being disappointed means that you had a specific set of expectations that were not meant, those acts that you expected to happen are out of your control, so don't bother yourself with being disappointed.
The other point is that We don't have to do it the "Global" way, we can do it our own way, Jordan is not out of ideas I hope :)
dude thank you, exactly ma point ^^
What does "doing it our own way" mean? Have you the sad state of affairs we come at as a result of our own way?
The Call to Action Jordan movement, a non-profit collaboration of independent activists with the GCC and the EDN established 2 years ago, aims to tackle the lack of public awareness to environmental issues we are facing in Jordan: educate, mobilize and inspire personal/community action.
If you are interested, you could check our campaigns on our website:
http://call2actjo.ning.com/
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