Earth Hour is an event promoted by World Wide Fund for Nature Australia (WWF), an environmental lobby group, and the Sydney Morning Herald that asks households and businesses to turn off their lights and non-essential electrical appliances for one hour of a March evening to promote electricity conservation and thus lower carbon emissions. The first Earth Hour was held in Sydney, Australia between 7:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. on 31 March 2007. The 2007 Earth Hour is estimated to have cut Sydney’s mains electricity consumption by between 2.1% and 10.2% for that hour, with as many as 2.2 million people taking part. A second Earth Hour will be held in Sydney, Melbourne, Montreal, Toronto,Chicago, Tel Aviv and other cities on multiple March 2008 dates.
The 2007 Earth Hour was part of a wider awareness campaign that aimed to reduce Sydney’s carbon emissions by 5%. 68,506 individuals and 2,270 businesses registered their intention to participate on the Earth Hour website. Energy Australia, a utility, attributed a 10.2% decrease in consumption during the hour to the campaign. A poll of about 1000 people conducted afterwards suggested that 57% of Sydneysiders participated ‘ some 2.2 million people.
Strong backing from the City of Sydney and its Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, helped to make Earth Hour 2008 an international event.
As of 18 March, over 9000 businesses and 136,000 individuals had indicated their intention to participate at earthhour.org.
Earth Hour 2008 will include the following “partner cities” Aalborg, Denmark, Aarhus, Denmark, Adelaide, Australia, Atlanta, United States, Bangkok, Thailand, Brisbane, Australia, Canberra, Chicago, United States, Christchurch, NewZealand
Copenhagen, Denmark, Dubai, UAE, Dublin, Ireland, Lautoka, Fiji, Manila, Philippines, Melbourne, Montreal, Canada, Odense, Denmark, Ottawa, Canada, Perth, Australia
Phoenix, United States, San Francisco, United States, Suva, Fiji, Sydney, Australia, Tel Aviv, Israel, Toronto, Canada, Vancouver, Canada.
Last year we focused on one city because of the massive amount of coordination and organisation required to get a city to turn off it’s lights! We did not have the resources to expand the campaign in 2007 ‘ even though we know many people participated outside of Sydney ‘ and so we were not able to measure participation results from outside Sydney.
In 2008, however, Earth Hour will be taking place in over 20 cities around the world, and the list keeps growing. We always hoped that Earth Hour would grow into a global campaign. To start this process we focused on one of Australia’s, and the world’s iconic cities. Thanks to the success of Earth Hour in 2007 we have now asked other cities, both in Australia and abroad, to join us in supporting Earth Hour.
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