Posted by Benjamin on: 04.14.2008 /
Two weeks ago, on March 29th, 58% of adults in Australia, along with 26 world class cities and 370 cities internationally, all turned down their electricity use by turning off lights, appliances, phone chargers, and so forth for one hour, from 8PM to 9PM–calling it Earth Hour
Imagine what that must have looked like–watching Sydney, or Phoenix, or Chicago, or San Francisco, or Toronto, at 8PM–suddenly the whole city starts to go dark. Very kewl.
You can see some video of Toronto here.
One veiwer described watching San Francisco go dark this way
A hush fell over the crowd as the time for Earth Hour approached, and the clock tower on the Ferry Building signaled the moment, not with a chime this time, but by turning off its lights - starting a wave of darkness that fell over the rest of the building and the city. At 8 pm local time, famous landmarks in this City by the Bay turned their lights off. The Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower and Alcatraz Island, the Embarcadero and Transamerica buildings all went dark for Earth Hour.
The point was to save electricity and thus reduce carbon emissions. And it worked really well. In Toronto, for instance, power consumption dropped 264 megawatts compared to normal. Wow. Multiply that by the people all over the world who participated, and you get some serious electricity savings.
Mark your calendars for 2009, because we are planning an even bigger event next year.
You can sign up for Earth Hour 2009 here, as an individual, or as a school, company, or organization.
Earth Hour also has some ideas for Earth Hour every day.
This just really amazes me. How often do we see a kewl idea take off *that* big? Sometimes it feels like it’s only the really horrible ideas that take off so big and have huge consequences. This story kind of makes me believe again in crazy things like the idea that maybe we *can* reverse climate change. (I can’t believe I just said that.)
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