THE HAGUE â€" Camera, lights off, action!
Last Saturday night between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. local time â€" at this time of year, an hour of darkness in most places â€" hundreds of millions people switched off non-essential electric lights for Earth Hour.
Initiated by the WWF, the annual event is aimed at raising awareness of the planet and climate change.
Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, said in a video in support of Earth Hour:
We participate with an undimmed determination to take action on climate change. Everyone has a role to play. Governments need to provide the political will, businesses can contribute solutions, and civil society, especially young people, can mobilize global action.
Far from the somber affair the gravity of the challenge would suggest, the yearly event becomes a rolling celebration as clocks in successive time zones strike 8:30 p.m..
This year’s event included large and colorful candlelight demonstrations, concerts and shows attracting crowds in cities around the world.
Among the gaggle of environmental events on the calendar each year that try to bring public focus to a particular environmental issue, Earth Hour is a superstar.
The commander of the International Space Station, Chris Hadfield, took to twitter to promise to watch the events unfold.
Even Vladimir Putin participated in Earth Hour, for the first time this year, switching off the lights in the Kremlin.
The success of the six-year-old event can be measured not only in how many people participated or which celebrities endorsed it, but also what public monuments take part in the event.
Besides the Kremlin in Moscow’s red square, the Harbor Bridge in Sidney, the Eiffel Tower in Paris (the city of light), Buckingham Palace in London, the Empire State Building in New York and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco were among the many well-known structures and buildings that go dark for an hour at 8:30 p.m. local time.
Our calendar is chock full of dates that call for collective action or attention to environmental issues. Several days during the year are dedicated to bigger and more general issues, while other days - such as World Wetland Day (February 2th) or World Sparrow Day (March 20th), for example - focus on a much more specific cause.
Here on Rendezvous, we reported last year on Park(ing) Day and the 24-hour Climate Reality webcast and, just last week, on World Water Day.
But what do these publicized events actually do to help the environment
The Christian Science Monitor investigated whether Earth Hour itself actually reduces carbon emissions (one of the most commonly known causes of climate change). It found that the burning candles used during the event to replace the electric lights, generally do not pollute as much as the lights would.
A Canadian utility found that the energy saved in Ontario alone during last year’s Earth Hour would be enough to completely power a city of 50,000 people for that hour.
But the event itself is not supposed to save the planet; it’s supposed to call attention to the fight.
In Australia, the birthplace of the event, one famous building was well lit during Earth Hour. The Sidney Opera House shone green this year, when many other buildings were dark, to show its commitment to renewable energy.
Join our conversation. Do you think such symbolic actions as Earth Hour can concretely help save the planet
