Living Darkly on the Earth

'Earth Hour' event switches off lights around the world

Posted at 6:04 AM on 31 Mar 2008

This weekend, cities, businesses, and individuals around the world switched off or dimmed their lights for an hour to raise awareness about climate change. The event, called "Earth Hour," started in Sydney, Australia, last year; organizers say that this year it spread to about 380 cities and towns in 35 countries, temporarily extinguishing non-essential lights and darkening landmarks around the world, including the Sydney Opera House and the Golden Gate Bridge. Internet search engine Google even switched its homepage background from white to black to mark the event. Aside from awareness-raising, the event did save a modest amount of energy in some areas. But that wasn't necessarily the point. "The main point is not to make a significant dent in climate change, but to demonstrate the need for people to take leadership on their own to address this problem," said Richard Moss of the World Wildlife Fund.

sources: Reuters, Agence France-Presse, BBC News, The Washington Post

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Comments: (2 comments)

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Blue Laws

Although I rebelliously blazed all my apartment lights on Saturday at 8pm, I do like the idea of turning things off.

Originally my mantra was that anything which is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week is guaranteed a page in the Book of Cool.

Now, maybe the solution to our problems is to go back to Blue Laws on Sunday. I mean, how about if we all call a Social Detente and agree to give each other a rest? Let's close as much stuff as possible on Sunday and stay home, have big dinners, watch a little tv, play ball at the park, sleep and then go at it on Mondays.

We could save 1/7th off all the energy being expended in big retail outlets, in driving to big retail outlets and so on.

by jabailo at 10:16 AM on 31 Mar 2008

Have You Ever Seen .....

A satellite photo of the US at night ...... the whole country is lit up like a carnival ......we don't need all the streetlights and parking lots lit up like ball fields ....... they should all be cut-off at 9 or 10 pm ..... we have headlights on our cars .....it is a total waste and total stupdity

"We Have Found the Enemy and It Is Us" ... Pogo

by rrecroc at 6:05 PM on 31 Mar 2008

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