Ashwin and I observed Earth Hour last night. We shut off our lights for an hour, from 8pm to 9pm. Begun in Sydney in 2007, as a programme of the World Wildlife Fund, this year the event spread to other parts of the world, including San Francisco, where lights were turned off on the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges. Unfortunately, we didn’t see much of an impact in Berkeley (which is otherwise a city highly conscious of climate change as it is of everything else). On 31st March 2007, 2.2 million people and 2100 Sydney businesses turned off their lights for one hour, and according to the information on the website, if the greenhouse reduction achieved in the Sydney CBD during Earth Hour was sustained for a year, it would be equivalent to taking 48,616 cars off the road for a year.
I realise that there will always be a sense of so little, so late, so symbolic when participating in events such as these (I mean, we did the same thing with candlelight vigils against the war in Iraq and where did that get us?), but decreasing energy consumption has tangible results. And I do believe that symbolism is an intrinsic part of the process of material change. Now if only the American Presidential candidates would give us something tangible on withdrawing from Iraq…
Image by jeromeinsf, courtesy Flickr.