Earth Hour

File:Earth-Hour-Logo.jpg

The logo for Earth Hour

Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House were darkened during Earth hour 2007.

Earth Hour is an international event that asks households and businesses to turn off their lights and non-essential electrical appliances for one hour on the evening of 29 March at 8 pm local time until 9 pm to promote electricity conservation and thus lower carbon emissions. It may also help reduce light pollution, and in 2008, coincides with the beginning of National Dark Sky Week in the USA.

It is promoted by World Wide Fund for Nature Australia (WWF), an environmental lobby group, and the Sydney Morning Herald. The first Earth Hour was held in Sydney, Australia between 7:30 pm and 8:30 pm on 31 March, 2007. The 2007 Earth Hour is estimated to have cut Sydney's mains electricity consumption by between 2.1% and 10.2% for that hour, with as many as 2.2 million people taking part. Earth Hour 2008 marks the first anniversary of the event with many partner cities and individuals around the world participating.

Earth Hour 2008

Strong backing from the City of Sydney and its Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, helped to make Earth Hour 2008 an international event. The official Earth Hour website has confirmed that over 286,000 people and over 20,000 businesses have signed up for the event as of 1pm GMT 0.

As of 27 March, over 11,900 businesses and over 200,000 individuals had registered to indicate their intention to participate.

Bret Waldner will not be participating.

Google

File:Earth Hour on Google.png

A screenshot of the "darkened" Google homepage.

Earth Hour has also received the backing of search engine giant, Google. From 12:00 AM on March 29, 2008 till the end of that day, the Google homepage in the United States, Canada, and the UK was turned to a black background. Their tagline is, "We've turned the lights out. Now it's your turn - Earth Hour." According to their website:

Google users in Canada (or UK, US) will notice today that we "turned the lights out" on the Google.com homepage as a gesture to raise awareness of a worldwide energy conservation effort called Earth Hour. As to why we don't do this permanently - it saves no energy; modern displays use the same amount of power regardless of what they display. However, you can do something to reduce the energy consumption of your home PC by joining the Climate Savers Computing Initiative.

Given our company's commitment to environmental awareness and energy efficiency, we strongly support the Earth Hour campaign, and have darkened our homepage today to help spread awareness of what we hope will be a highly successful global event.

Partner cities

Earth Hour 2008 will include the following partner cities.

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Supporting cities

As well, a list of select cities and regions supporting the event follows:

Column-generating template families

The templates listed here are not interchangeable. For example, using {{col-float}} with {{col-end}} instead of {{col-float-end}} would leave a <div>...</div> open, potentially harming any subsequent formatting.

Column templates

Type	Family	Handles wiki table code?†	Responsive/ mobile suited	Start template	Column divider	End template
Float	"col-float"	Yes	Yes	{{col-float}}	{{col-float-break}}	{{col-float-end}}
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Scheduling

Many buildings in Sydney also turned off their lights.

Prior to 2008, San Francisco had been running a Lights Out program of their own that occurred in October. For 2008, it was being moved to March 29 to align with Australia's Earth Hour. This also happens to be the year that Earth Hour became an international event and San Francisco was asked to be a partner city in Earth Hour. Rather than have a competing event, San Francisco is supporting Earth Hour and all Lights Out efforts will now move to supporting the international Earth Hour event. Since Earth Hour for 2008 is on a Saturday, many high schools in the Greater Toronto Area participated by turning off half the lights in classrooms during the last hour of school on Friday March 28, 2008. The tagline of Earth Hour 2008 is, "See the difference you can make." However, on the official radio advertisement, the tagline is, "Dark city, bright idea."

Tel Aviv moved their Earth Hour one day ahead to avoid conflict with Sabbath. Dublin moved their Earth Hour to between 9pm and 10pm due to their northern geographical location.

Celebrations around the world

• In Sydney, Australia, the end of Earth Hour was celebrated with a fireworks show.
• The Danish royal palaces went dark at the queen's command.

Criticism

Criticisms centred on the Hour's being mere tokenism, its effectiveness in reducing carbon emissions, whether the significant reduction in electricity consumption reported occurred at all, and questionable coverage of the event by the media conglomerate that sponsored it.

Measurement of reduction in electricity use

According to figures from EnergyAustralia, a local utility, mains electricity consumption was 10.2% lower during the Hour than would be expected given the time, weather conditions and past four years' consumption patterns. Although the Herald equated this with "taking 48,613 cars off the road for one hour", Andrew Bolt claimed that it represented taking only six cars off the road for a year.

The 10.2% figure was itself challenged in a detailed analysis by David Solomon, a student at the University of Chicago. Solomon used eight years of electricity usage data to conclude that the Earth Hour-inspired drop was only 6.33%, and that after other potential factors were taken into account, only 2.10%, "statistically indistinguishable from zero." In some areas in the Northern Hemisphere, it will be twilight at 8 pm, removing some of the advantages of the event.

Fairfax coverage

Media Watch, a television show scrutinising the press, reported on claims that The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age had run misleading and even manipulated photographs of the event. The program shows Before and After photos published by the Papers and states that the photos may have been manipulated by overexposure.

See also

• Light pollution
• National Dark Sky Week

External links

• Earth Hour - official website
• Christchurch Earth Hour - Christchurch and Canterbury, New Zealand information
• Earth Hour 2008 - a collection of Earth Hour 2008 news articles and press releases