Where were you for Earth Hour? I confess that I don’t remember. I was comfortably living my life while the skylines went dark all over 88 countries and over 4,000 cities worldwide on March 28, 2009. Thomas Edison’s laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, where the incandescent light bulb was invented, went dark. Most of us in the U.S. pretty much went on about our lives.
This year’s Earth Hour dwarfed the 2008 event when only 400 cities participated. Will it make a difference? I can’t imagine that it will. Maybe world leaders will listen and do a little more this December at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference.
Even without U.S. support, Earth Hour has come a long way from its 2007 beginnings in Sydney Australia – when lights were voluntarily switched off by 2.2 million homes and business establishments for an hour. The light switch off in observance of Earth Hour has become a global symbolism of the people’s vote for the earth’s sustainability. Among the world’s landmarks that stood in darkness for an hour include San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, Sydney’s Opera House, Rome’s Colosseum, New York’s Empire State Building and Chrysler Building, Big Ben and Westminster Abbey in London, Edinburgh Castle, and the UN Headquarters among others.
The World Wide Fund for nature or WWF, which organized the global event since its 2007 inception, will continue to hold Earth Hour annually during the last Saturday of March. Next year’s Earth Hour, which will be on March 27, 2010, will once again see the switching off not only of non-essential light bulbs but of other electrical appliances to raise awareness on climate change.
On top of the list of Earth Hour participants is the Philippines with 647 cities and towns and more than 15 million Filipinos switching off their lights for an hour. This was followed by Greece with 484 cities and towns and then Australia with 308 cities and towns. More than the number of cities and people participating in the Earth Hour is the amount of energy saved during that span of time.
Delhi, India was reportedly able to save as much as 1000MWh (Mega Watt Hours) during Earth Hour. At least 611 MWh of electricity, which was equivalent to the shutdown of about a dozen power plants fired by coal, was saved by the Philippines during the one hour period. South Africans were not only able to save 400 Mwh of electricity but they also managed to save 224 tons of coal, 400 tons of carbon dioxide and 576,000 liters of water during Earth hour.
Earth Hour also saw a decrease in power demand for an hour especially in Ontario and Toronto, Canada where demand for electricity went down by 6% and 15.1% respectively. Svenska Krafnat in Sweden reported a 2.1% decrease in power consumption which is equivalent to the power consumption of about half a million households. What about the U.S.? Figures are not easily available, and the U.S. did not participate as broadly as other countries.
Ireland’s power consumption went down by 2% or 70MWh which is translated to a savings of about 30 tons of CO2 emissions. Electricity demand in Vietnam went down by 140MWh as per reports from the Vietnam Electricity Company.
But more than the energy saved, the Earth Hour demonstrates what the human race can achieve if they only learn to cooperate with one another and unite as a people. I think we in the U.S. should join in next year. (I hope I remember this next March.) While it is largely symbolic, Earth Hour does unite people of all ages, races, and nationalities toward a common goal of saving the earth. It was only a flop in the U.S.
