{"id":1153,"date":"2012-04-03T07:03:17","date_gmt":"2012-04-03T06:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=1153"},"modified":"2012-04-03T07:03:17","modified_gmt":"2012-04-03T06:03:17","slug":"passing-the-panda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2012\/04\/03\/passing-the-panda\/","title":{"rendered":"Passing the Panda"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"wwf.org.uk\/earthhour\">Earth Hour<\/a> was on 31 March 2012, 2030, and was something of a global phenomenon with, we're told, hundreds of millions of people turning off their lights for one hour across the planet \u2013 something we were urged to watch from our computers. \u00a0I fear I did neither.<\/p>\n<p>But it wasn't just to save an hour\u2019s electricity, of course. \u00a0Earth Hour was about people's coming together to put the focus on this world we all share \u2013 and how we should protect it: not just for an hour, but every hour \u2013 every day. \u00a0It was\u00a0a celebration, it seems \u2013 as someone who emailed me noted:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It\u2019s a special candlelit evening at home with friends or family, a night out on the town, or watching the spectacular global switch-offs live online from landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, Times Square, or Sydney Opera House.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Apparently even the Italian rugby team and Totti (I initially read this as \"Totty\") were enthused \u2013 though it wasn't clear what they'd be doing until I read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.earthhour.org\/blog\/sydney-opera-house-francesco-totti-and-italian-rugby-team-get-board\">this<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Under the WWF banner for the very first time, the Italian Rugby Team scrummed down for the planet, playing at the Olympic Stadium in Rome at the recent Six Nations Tournament. \u00a0The Italian team and Federugby support the fight against climate change, and a few days before their official debut, the official Italian Earth Hour video was shot at the Olympic Stadium. \u00a0The video shows rugby stars Andrea Lo Cicero, Simone Favaro and Cornelius Van Zyl, \u2018passing the panda\u2019, and inviting their fans and the general public to change their bad habits and \u2018team up\u2019 for a more sustainable world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Whilst 'passing the panda' may well catch on in Italy \u2013 though not in England where blood sports are banned \u2013\u00a0\u00a0I'm very doubtful about all this iconography of candles with its celebration of the dark and doing without. \u00a0I do wonder what the point is. \u00a0And, isn't there something <em>very<\/em> odd about watching darkness descend on a computer screen? \u00a0 I trust that the Olympics won't be adopting this strategy for its opening ceremony.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earth Hour was on 31 March 2012, 2030, and was something of a global phenomenon with, we're told, hundreds of millions of people turning off their lights for one hour across the planet \u2013 something we were urged to watch...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}