Reminder: Earth Hour tomorrow!

[corbet]

Earth Hour is tomorrow. It's a climate change awareness event organized by the World Wildlife Federation, and it's easy to participate -- just turn out your lights between 8pm and 9pm!

A quote from the WWF site that's making me happy:

"Canada has one of the highest participation rates around the globe with over 150 cities participating! Many

Comments

[neeuqdrazil]

I was listening to CBC this morning, and they had the GM(?) of the ACC on - they've got a Raptors game happening on Saturday night, but they're going to turn off all 'non-essential' lights, including in the concourses and parking garages...

[insaint]

(Kinda makes me wish I could be in TO to see the media circus at Yonge & Dundas go dark. ;)

You and me both. It'd be even more awesome at night.

One of my favourite sights has always been the 401 back in 2003 during the blackout. So dark. So awesome.

[carolep]

well, I don't know what everyone ELSE is going to do, but my kids have asked if we can light candles and tell stories, so there you go. :)

[ocdancegirl]

I'm hoping that by 8pm Jos and I are done moving him into his cozy little 1 bedroom apartment, otherwise we won't be able to participate... its not quite safe to be moving boxes and furniture in the dark *lol*

[photogeek_mtl]

So I have a bit of a problem with this whole thing...

It's really a combination of things. First, electricity in these areas generally comes from nuclear or hydro, and so have zero carbon footprint. So turning the lights off is really at best a symbolic gesture.

But it can be worse than that - many places in Canada - certainly in Ontario and Quebec at least - are heated by oil or natural gas.

Electric lights generate heat as well as light.

So if you have oil or gas heat, and you turn off your lights for an hour - you are actually *increasing* your carbon footprint slightly, since you'll have to burn a bit more oil or gas to heat your place.

I guess I like that there's a gesture of unity around this --- but I kinda wish it wasn't something that could increase the amount of CO2 being emitted.

[corbet]

That's a really interesting point. *sigh* Nothing's simple, is it?

[horsetraveller]

I heard a guy on CBC talk about what he wanted people to get out of this (forget his title, it was something fancy) and the actual energy savings was not the big point.