Earth Hour

On Saturday March 29th, 2008 at 8 p.m. local time, people around the world are being asked to turn their lights off for one hour. This is in aid of Earth Hour, which aims to create awareness about climate change. It was started last year by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Sydney, Australia and was a resounding success, with 2.2 million people and businesses participating. This year it is going global, with 17 cities signed up so far, including Toronto, Chicago, Manila, Tel Avis, Copenhagen, Melbourne and Christchurch, New Zealand. Download pdf document on how to make it happen in your town. Or our town.

It's a good time for all of us to think of how much we have and how much we waste. Did you know, for example, that you are still drawing power if you leave your cellphone charger plugged in after charging your phone? The same is for other electronic devices that we think that we've turned off.

Participating in Earth Hour is a simple way to show that you want to be part of the solution. We don't have to live in Toronto to care about the environment and want to show our politicians that we want change and are willing to change ourselves.

For more information and links:

The Toronto Star - An interesting video called Airsick by Toronto Star Photographer Lucas Oleniuk
Green Blog - by Toronto Star Columnists
WWF Canada - and info on Earth Hour and other issues
Official Earth Hour site
The Sydney Morning Herald - because, well they started it.

Earth Hour - The Aftermath - June 2008

So, perhaps on March 29th, you turned off your lights for an hour to celebrate Earth Hour, to show everyone that you were concerned about the planet. So is that it? Are we done now?

The Earth Hour Clock is already counting down to next year. But there are so many things we can do every day to make sure that we start being smart about our planet, our country and our own communities.

We can reduce what we waste, by turning off lights, not wasting water. You know the drill, but we can be more creative. We can write to companies that we feel use too much packaging and tell them it isn't needed. We can write to our MPs, our MPPs, the major party leaders and tell them that we aren't happy with the meagre changes that they are making. We want them to re-think their views on electric cars in Ontario that the Zenn company manufacture. We can ask them to start only allowing smart growth and stop building these communities that you have to have a car to get to. We can ask them to start being pro-active about oil and realize that there are alternatives that we should and could be working on now, rather than making deals with regimes in other countries because of our insatiable appetite for oil products.

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Earth Hour