Earth Hour Approaches

Earth Hour, the global movement to turn out lights from 8:30 to 9:30 in your local time on Saturday, March 29, is fast approaching. The growing popularity of this event, backed by the World Wildlife Fund, has attracted the support of cities, governments, businesses, and individuals around the world.

From the Earth Hour website: 2,712 cities, towns and municipalities in 83 countries have already committed to VOTE EARTH for Earth Hour 2009, as part of the worlds first global election between Earth and global warming.

Apparently, turning off your lights is akin to “voting earth”, whereas leaving them on is a vote for global warming. The VOTE EARTH angle on Earth Hour is, I believe, designed to emphasize that the event is about a show of support, not to actually save energy. Overall, Earth Hour represents a call to action for world leaders to move forward on combating climate change.

Having read several articles (and comments) assuming energy savings was the real goal, I personally never found claims on Earth Hour’s website that it would actually save energy. Although this could be true if enough people participated, most power plants won’t be turning off coal plants in response to some small percentage of their customers’ lights being off for an hour. I think WWF and the folks running Earth Hour would probably concede this, and argue that the symbolic power of the event is much more important than temporary energy savings.

Personally, I would agree – especially at the time like this, when climate change policies are gaining such momentum in the US and overseas. Earth Hour can only serve to highlight this momentum and accelerate it. More power to us (eventually) using less power!