“See the Difference You Can Make”: Earth Hour 2008

by Mary Ann Wilson

What’s more romantic than a candlelit evening? A candlelit evening inspired by a shared environmental conscience, that’s what.

Last year, millions of Australians participated in the first annual Earth Hour to raise awareness about, and to actively combat, climate change caused by global warming (if you still think that global warming “isn’t real,” better pull your head out of the increasingly hot sand real quick, and hope that right-wing of yours can fly you and your descendants to another planet). This year, at 8 p.m. next Saturday, March 29, 2008, millions of people worldwide will accept the Earth Hour “challenge.”

I put the word “challenge” in quotation marks (twice, even) because the concept could not be simpler or easier: shut off your lights for one hour. That’s it. Such a small gesture can be all it takes to really get you thinking about your personal environmental impact and responsibility, but Earth Hour is far from a gesture alone. According to its website (www.earthhour.org), “[i]f the greenhouse reduction achieved in the Sydney CBD during Earth Hour [2007] was sustained for a year, it would be equivalent to taking 48,616 cars off the road for a year.” Small effort, big results.

Sharing Earth Hour with a special someone, sharing in its purpose together- and in the dark, no less- could prove to be an intimate bonding experience. It goes without saying that your reasons for taking part in Earth Hour should be its incredible symbolic significance and its actual environmental effects, but who says you can’t also take advantage of this special occasion to make some electricity of your own? The lights will be turned off; you don’t have to be.

Who: EVERYONE
When: Saturday, March 29, 2008, 8-9 p.m. (or longer)
Where: To ensure your participation and maximize its potential, er, benefits, I recommend just staying in (although as of the writing of this parenthetical afterthought, the Earth Hour website’s counter of registered businesses was 10, 137).
Why: To do good and feel good; to help represent Toronto as a climate-conscious metropolis