Every day should be an Earth Hour Day -- Loren

Senator Loren Legarda appealed to all Filipinos yesterday to make tonight's celebration of Earth Hour the start of a continuing effort to enhance the environment by saving energy.

"Let's make Earth Hour a year-round celebration of life and a concerted effort against global warming," said Loren, founder and chair of the environmental group Luntiang Pilipinas, which has already planted over two million trees nationwide since its founding in 1998.

"Our imagination is the only limit on how we can make every day an Earth Hour day. As Earth Hour calls for the symbolic switching off of lights, let us take it a step farther on our own by cutting down on the use of energy and resources for at least one hour each day."

She said that a family, for example, can cut down on the use of air-conditioning from eight hours to seven hours a night or from watching television from four hours to three. A bucket less of water used in washing clothes or dishes would translate to big savings in potable water, whose supply is threatened worldwide, Loren pointed out.

A laureate of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), Loren said that the energy crisis looming over Cebu should emphasize the need for people to be sparing in their use of power and other resources.

"Earth Hour should go beyond the mere switching of lights. It must be all encompassing so much so that motorists, for example, should endeavor to cut their use of their vehicles for at least an hour a day through car pooling, the use of mass transportation or the planning of their trips to find the shortest routes available to their destinations," she said.

She added that by limiting the dependence of countries on fossil fuels, which are used to generate electricity and to power transport vehicles over land, air and sea, the global level of greenhouse emissions - being partly blamed for global warming - can be reduced substantially.

Global warming results in extreme climate changes such as prolonged droughts, stronger typhoons, flooding and the reduction of coastal areas.

Loren said the challenge to lawmakers is to craft more laws that would protect the environment, support efforts to shift to renewable sources of energy, and to ensure that such laws are implemented to the letter.

"It has been said that the Philippines is a model for other countries when it comes to the number of environmental laws that had been passed. But the flaw of such an accolade is that the said environmental laws are not being fully implemented," Loren said.

In the Philippines, the Earth Hour celebration is being spearheaded by the Department of Energy (DOE). Globally, the project aims to reach at least one billion people, who would switch off their lights for one hour to show solidarity with the movement.