Going dark for Global Warming

Saturday, March 28, at 8:30 pm, tens of millions of people in hundreds of cities around the world came together once again to make a bold statement about climate change, by doing something quite simple—turning off their lights for one hour.

Earth Hour was first celebrated two years ago in Sydney, Australia, when 2.2 million people and thousands of businesses turned out their lights, allowing the message about climate change to shine brightly (or not!).

88 countries and more than 4,000 cities joined Earth Hour 2009, a huge increase from the 35 countries that participated for Earth Hour 2008. One billion "votes" was the stated aim for Earth Hour 2009. Among the participants in 2009 was, for the first time, the United Nations headquarters in New York City!

An example of the energy saved was the Canadian province of Ontario, outside of Toronto, which saw a decrease of 6% of electricity while Toronto saw a decrease of 15.1% (nearly doubled from 8.7% the previous year) as many businesses darkened, including the landmark CN Tower.

Swedish electricity operator Svenska Kraftnät recorded a 5% decrease in consumption. This equals approximately half a million households out of the total 4.5 million households in Sweden.

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