Earth Hour began in Sydney in 2007, when 2.2 million homes and businesses switched off their lights for one hour. Now, people of all ages, nationalities, race and background have the opportunity to use their light switch as their vote.

Yes, it is this simple. By switching off the lights, you cast a vote for Earth and a vote against climate change. This year’s target is to have 1 billion people switch off their lights as part of this global vote.

Vote Earth by simply switching off your lights for one hour, and join the world for Earth Hour on March 28, 8:30-9:30pm local time.

Do this for our planet. It’s the only one we’ve got.

Climate change aside, the environmental problems we are facing are staggering. If we do nothing about it or act too late, these damages may become permanent and possibly irreversible. The rapid loss and desertification of our forested areas, and the loss of Arctic ice, along with increased pollution of our oceans and loss of fisheries are some of these problems. You may not know that today there are 40 times more plastic pollutant in the sea than plankton, and marine life is eating these. You may also not know that incinerating rubbish for landfills releases dioxins – a lethal toxin – into the atmosphere.

Thus, Earth Hour shouldn’t be the only time you do your part for Earth. A lot of the above problems are caused by our exploitation of our planet’s resources, a consequence of our consumption patterns. The end products we use, all contribute for the damage we are causing to our environment – right from raw material extraction to its manufacturing and ultimate disposal.

You might not be aware that some products these days are designed with built-in obsolescence – a design strategy that ensure you will need to dispose of the product after 2 – 3 years even when it’s still functioning. Take for example, how CPUs moved from being socket mounted to slot-mounted and back in the past 10 years, or the laptop that comes with one extra RAM slots that will only take RAM modules up to 2GB of RAM or chipsets that refuses to recognise anything more than that. Tough luck if you are one of the rare few having a 4GB memory requirement – you simply end up buying either a desktop or another laptop at obscene prices.

Beyond that you have other products like digital cameras that comes with memory expansion slots incapable of reading the latest memory cards. While it may not be necessary for you to put in the biggest memory card available, what is most infuriating is that it is too expensive or even impossible to obtain the ones that it does read!

When built-in obsolescence does not force you to upgrade or replace the product, it is then perceived obsolescence. Perceived obsolescence usually comes in the form of peer pressure, for e.g. that nice little new phone that has animated wallpapers, a 5-Megapixel Camera, or your colleague getting a LCD to replace her CRT. None of these things really enhances the main features you use or increase productivity. You are simply pressurized into buying them because you don’t want to look old fashioned.

Simply put, let us be clear about our needs and not our wants. Do your part in reducing the exploitation of our planet. Give our planet a chance.