Earth Hour Saved Electricity--Now, Let's Do It Again

by Andrea Millar — April 10, 2008

Perhaps March 29th you reached up at 7:59 and flicked your lights off, and kept them off, for the 60 minutes of Earth Hour. This international event of energy conservation had major cities like Bangkok, Toronto, San Francisco, and the Hour's mother city of Sydney switching off all nonessential lights at 8pm. Tel Aviv held their hour on the 27th so as not to conflict with the Sabbath and, like many locations, featured a free celebration powered by green energy, in their case, falafel oil.

Cities reported drops of 2 to 9% in energy usage across the globe as lights went out over the Golden Gate Bridge, the Sydney Opera House, many high rises in Bangkok, and perhaps on your home street. In Denmark, the Queen herself gave the command to darken the royal Amalienborg and Grasten palaces.

Naturally, there were critics of the gesture, citing the events tokenism and short duration. Even in Australia, where the gesture is widely regarded as a success, reportedly 30% of participants left their television on. Still, giving the night sky reprieve from the carbon emissions of just one edifice like the Golden Gate Bridge for only an hour is a result that's hard to knock. And at a time of plenty international divisiveness, utilizing large-scale collective effervescence to mobilize people en masse for the earth, even for just an hour, is certainly a formula worth repeating. Why not mobilize the people in your building or neighborhood for a little Earth Hour power of your own?