earth hour - the sequel
Photo: http://flickr.com/photos/kelliejane/440679118/in/pool-earthhour/
It seems that I underestimated the effectiveness of Earth Hour last Saturday evening, based on observations in Sydney's southern suburbs. True, our Anglican Church, which has a youth service and dinner on Saturday evening, turned off its lights and had dinner by candlelight, but not many houses seemed to take part.
But even though only 65,000 houses and 2,000 organisations registered to participate, polls indicated more than 2 million people (half of Sydney's population) switched off their lights, with many turning off appliances and TVs as well.
Estimates of the overall impact are still being made, but in the normally brightly-lit CBD offices, entertainment venues, advertising signs and public icons like the Harbour Bridge and Opera House had lighting turned off, and energy usage for that hour was estimated to be 10% reduced. For photos and details, see the Sydney Morning Herald's report.
The originators of the idea, environmental organisation WWF, hailed the first Earth Hour as a success, and foreshadowed a world-wide Earth Hour in 2008.
Labels:
environment
I read about this, and how it seemed to go a lot better than predicted... of course, there are still the cynics who don't want to bother, and can't see the point, but as they seem to take this attitude to so many things it loses its impetus a little, at least with me ;)
ReplyDeleteof course, my single lamp and laptop, lack of television and stereo, and no other appliances that use 'standby' mean that I have a personal Earth Evening almost every day ;)
Yes, it became a bit of a cause celebre in the city, where companies were keen to present a responsible image, restaurants and bars made a feature of socialising under limited light and people had picnics aound the harbour in the semi-dark. So many of these registered. But the unexpected result was in the suburbs (but perhaps less so in 'the Shire' from my limited observation) where many people apparently (according to survey, not observation) joined in despite not registering.
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