No power for one hour
One hour. Only one hour of one of your 366 days this year. Will you choose to make a difference? Will you lessen your impact on the environment? This coming Saturday, March 29, at 8 p.m., cities across the world, including London, Ontario will be participating in Earth Hour, an event in which everybody is asked to turn off their electricity and their cars to raise awareness of climate change, and prove that we all have a role to play in fighting global warming.
Earth Hour was started last year as a single event in Sydney, Australia, where organizers managed to mobilize over two million people and saved 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere. After the world watched Sydney ‘blackout' for an hour (2.2 million people turned off their lights), environmental organizers in other cities decided to jump on the bandwagon, and go global this year. Established environmental organizations like the World Wildlife Fund have also started to get involved in the global promotion of this hour and are doing a lot of organizing for 2008. The World Wildlife Fund is not stopping at the hour either; they are following ‘Earth Hour' up with the everyday ‘live the good life' campaign that attempts to show us that we can significantly reduce our own carbon footprint in our everyday lives while increasing our quality of life.
Although Toronto will be holding massive events in public spaces and is the focus of the Canadian Earth Hour campaign, other cities across Canada are taking part in their own ways including Ottawa, Vancouver, Montreal, London and many more.
In London the city says it “will join other cities around the world by turning off its non-essential lights for just one hour - Earth Hour - to show that it's possible to take action on global warming.' Our city government also stated that they “encourage every individual, household and business in the City of London, and beyond, to join us.” The city is encouraging businesses to turn off their interior and exterior lights and restaurants to host earth hour ‘candlelight' dinners.
It's great to see that individuals, cities and corporations plan on shutting the power down for an hour. Even if this is only one hour out of 8,784 this year, it is still a positive step towards shifting the culture of consumerism that plagues our society to a more eco-friendly, environmentally aware culture of positive change. If you want to take it a little further go out and turn everything off, unplug every machine you come into contact with. Some people might not know about Earth Hour and they cannot be blamed for forgetting to live up to their obligation of blacking out this city. It's up to you to make the blackout happen, and to ensure we really give the Earth an hour to breathe. On March 29 at 8 p.m., it's time to power down!
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.
Earth Hour was started last year as a single event in Sydney, Australia, where organizers managed to mobilize over two million people and saved 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere. After the world watched Sydney ‘blackout' for an hour (2.2 million people turned off their lights), environmental organizers in other cities decided to jump on the bandwagon, and go global this year. Established environmental organizations like the World Wildlife Fund have also started to get involved in the global promotion of this hour and are doing a lot of organizing for 2008. The World Wildlife Fund is not stopping at the hour either; they are following ‘Earth Hour' up with the everyday ‘live the good life' campaign that attempts to show us that we can significantly reduce our own carbon footprint in our everyday lives while increasing our quality of life.
Although Toronto will be holding massive events in public spaces and is the focus of the Canadian Earth Hour campaign, other cities across Canada are taking part in their own ways including Ottawa, Vancouver, Montreal, London and many more.
In London the city says it “will join other cities around the world by turning off its non-essential lights for just one hour - Earth Hour - to show that it's possible to take action on global warming.' Our city government also stated that they “encourage every individual, household and business in the City of London, and beyond, to join us.” The city is encouraging businesses to turn off their interior and exterior lights and restaurants to host earth hour ‘candlelight' dinners.
It's great to see that individuals, cities and corporations plan on shutting the power down for an hour. Even if this is only one hour out of 8,784 this year, it is still a positive step towards shifting the culture of consumerism that plagues our society to a more eco-friendly, environmentally aware culture of positive change. If you want to take it a little further go out and turn everything off, unplug every machine you come into contact with. Some people might not know about Earth Hour and they cannot be blamed for forgetting to live up to their obligation of blacking out this city. It's up to you to make the blackout happen, and to ensure we really give the Earth an hour to breathe. On March 29 at 8 p.m., it's time to power down!
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.
