A story from "Earth Hour"

Yesterday (23rd March 2013), we had “black-out” from 8.30pm to 9.30pm in most parts of Sydney in conjunction with Earth Hour. I am sure you will be experiencing the same in whichever part of the world you are in. I remembered some years ago, when our daughter, Ashley was just seven years old, she came home from school all excited about Earth Hour. She insisted that we must have the one hour “black out” in our home in Kuala Lumpur. Her teacher told the class that this will save the environment and drive a strong environmental message to the world. I must say I was pretty naive at that time. I have not heard of Earth Hour as it was still new at that time (though, I have heard of the Earth Song by Michael Jackson!), so I asked Ashley what is Earth Hour? Ashley replied that Earth Hour means that we have to off all the lights for an hour to save electricity and the environment. I asked her where did she hear about it. She replied that she heard from her teacher and everyone in her class is going to do it.

After hearing our little girl, Jennifer and I decided that we should adhere to our little princess’ wish and we will have a total electricity cut off in our home from 8.30pm to 9.30pm on 23rd March 2008. We were all in one bedroom as our young kids slept with us. As soon as the clock struck 8.30pm, we switched off all the lights and we could see how excited our little girl was. However, as soon as I switched off the air-conditioner, I could hear groaning of displeasure and disappointment. Our daughter started to complain why on Earth did I switched off the air-conditioner, as it was really hot.  I told her that the air-conditioner consumed a lot of electricity and power, in fact more than all the lights that we have in our bedroom. Our little daughter said the teacher said we should switched off all the lights but the teacher did not mention about air-conditioners. Well, after our little girl stated her case and argument, we decided to come to a compromise (Mediation comes into play!). We have agreed that all the lights will be off but the air-conditioner will remain on - in other words, we will “suffer in comfort”.

What made this conversation with my daughter interesting is that young children tend to take information and instructions literally. One needs to be very careful when disseminating information or instructions. A young mind tends to absorb a lot of information and because their learning power is greater than an adult, they tend to take things in a literal sense. So when a person jokes in front of a child, just make sure that the child knows that it wasn’t meant to be serious and it was just made in good decent fun. Meanwhile, happy Earth Hour everybody