Anyone else heard of it?

Last year on the 29th of march Sydney shut down all it's lights, for an hour and the energy saved was equal to something like a saving of 146 000 (don't quote me) cars' energy, fossil fuel usage for a year's consumption.

Tonight here in Australia it is Earth Hour between 8 pm and 9 pm... one hour of hit the switch box....

Has anyone else heard of this?

And anyone else up for paying it forward for an hour's inconvenience?

Take a look...


http://news.google.com/news?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-

8&rlz=1T4SUNA_en___AU266&q=Earth+Hour+2008&um=1&hl=en&sa=X&oi
=news_result&resnum=1&ct=title

yeah ive heard of it, and id like to participate but ill be at work. and i work at a nursing home type place so we cant turn the lights and stuff out.

ya I heard of it.......tomorrow at 8 pm or something but Im not sure I can handle not playing on the pc!!!!

im turnin all my lights on.!!!!!!! lol

only to see if i can blow a fuse in the govt's plans .!!!! lmao

That's WONDERFUL!!!!!

I'm usually an optimist, but I have my doubts about 1/2 of Americans.

<-----hugs her computer tightly!!!! Basically Im really good about lights out anyways....I only have a 40 watt bulb in my living room right now.......and maybe a night light in the hallway at night!

i'm tryin to switch to led's in the whole house, with e- savers for the auxilliary look-for-it lights. ikea has these led's.

I'll be Having My Way Anally with the Ferriungus Burrowing Owls During Earth Hour! and US Fish and Wildlife Officer Jim Nasium is Gonna Join Me.

nothing will happen.

I think the USA talked about the worry of all of technology shutting down because none of the electronic devices were programmed to accept the year 2000. I think it was called the y2k bug or something.

The mayan calender says all of existence is going to end in the year 2012. lets all have a massive freak out.

I may have misconstrued, and gave an overzealous reply.

No kidding....

i haven't heard of anything like that around here...except for the switching of daylight savings time.

Have a peek at the site Lori, and see what you think... or perhaps blackle, or google Earth Hour..

Where the heck does Tim Blair come from and why is the butthead popular?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Blair


Have a read....

about to

I just love how some like to throw words like treehugger and Liberal around as if they were insults.

(rolls eyes) Oh hurt me.

Blair's Law = "one giant useless force"

What a TWIT!

I'm back... and yep it's after 9 pm...


Saturday March 29, 09:24 PM

Australia flicks switch for Earth Hour

Earth Hour returned to Australia on Saturday night, with Sydney's postcard-perfect harbour again temporarily plunged into darkness.

At 8pm (AEDT), the harbour bridge and its neighbouring Opera House dimmed from flood-lit tourism icons to still recognisable silhouettes.




Only security lighting remained on the structures, while elsewhere in Sydney's CBD, the office towers glowed rather than blazed against the night.

As lines of office lights inked out, a crowd of about 100 people at the harbourside park of Mrs Macquarie's Chair cheered.

"Earth Hour is a call to action. People have now responded and it's time to introduce some significant long-term changes," Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore said at an official Earth Hour function at the park.

"One inspired idea that began in Sydney just 12 months ago has become a world movement," she said.

Federal Climate Change Minister Penny Wong also addressed the function, saying the first significant act of the Rudd government was to sign the Kyoto Protocol.

"Earth Hour is a way in which individuals can take responsibility when it comes to climate change," she said.

When the first Earth Hour was staged in Sydney a year ago, an estimated 2.2 million Sydneysiders took part.

Organisers are tipping a massive increase in participation as the event has gone global this year.

"I'm putting my neck on the line but my hope is that we top 100 million people," Earth Hour Australia chief executive Greg Bourne said.

"There's 370 cities and municipalities taking part that we know about, and many others as well, so we only need 50 cities of two million people and we'll do it.

"When Canada goes ... tomorrow our time they are estimating some 70 per cent of Canadians will be involved."

Mr Bourne said Earth Hour, and its images of blacked-out cities, was akin to New Year's Eve as it was celebrated in the world's major cities with fireworks.

"Now we have this image of darkness, and consciousness, going around the world," he said.

"It is a message of hope and optimism ... we the citizens of the world are prepared to take action and we want to defeat climate change."

The world's differing time zones has required a staggered observance of Earth Hour, and Australia was one of the first to mark the climate change awareness event.

Only Christchurch in New Zealand and Fiji's Suva were ahead of Australia as the hour of 8pm, on March 29, rolled around.

More than 30 nations are to follow.

The US cities of San Francisco, Phoenix and Canada's Vancouver will be the final population centres to mark Earth Hour, at 2pm tomorrow Australia-time.

The only exception to timezone order was Israel's Tel Aviv, where Earth Hour was brought forward to 8pm, March 27, for religious reasons.

The core message of Earth Hour is for people to reduce their consumption of electricity, which is usually generated by the burning of fossil fuels.

Elsewhere in Australia, Melbourne icons including Flinders Street Station, Federation Square, Eureka Towers Skydeck and the Rialto Towers were blacked out.

The Criterion Hotel in the north-central Victorian town of Tatura planned to host a pyjama party, with a free beer on offer for those who bring a black balloon along - a symbol of an individual's carbon footprint.

"Pubs do tend to use a fair bit of power and energy," said the pub's licensee Nick Matei.

"We just want to make people more aware, and this is a good point to start."

In Brisbane, the brewery Castlemaine Perkins has for the first time switched off the famous neon lights of its XXXX Man while in Canberra, it was security lighting only in prominent buildings including the High Court of Australia, the National Library of Australia, the Australian War Memorial, and Parliament House.

"Even with a function scheduled on the night, the National Gallery of Australia has signed up to switch off as many lights as possible, to conserve energy for the benefit of our environment," Penny Wong said in a statement.