8pm local time, March 28, 2009. Switch off all non-essential electrical items for one hour.
It's not difficult.
Earth hour began in 2007 as a consciousness-raising exercise in Sydney, Australia. It was organised by WWF, the environmental group. In 2008 they took it international. 2009 aims to be the biggest ever world-wide switch-off.
On March 31, 2007, 2.2 million residents of Sydney responded to the call. Their actions, combined with a couple of thousand businesses, helped cut electricity consumption in Sydney by 10.2 percent for that hour.
Advertising billboards went dark. The famous Opera House switched off its floodlights. The Harbour Bridge disappeared into the twilight.
The 2008 project was even more successful, with all Australian cities and many more around the world participating. The organisers said "More than 370 {Australian} cities, towns and communities took part." Independent research indicated that 63 percent of adults in Adelaide actively took part by switching off one or more appliances. It has to be said that this research took place on-line and was largely self-selecting audience.
Most participants switched off lights and household appliances. About a third took one or more of the many charging units for mobile devices out of its wall socket.
Around the world, offices and business districts went dark. Phoenix, Arizona; San Francisco, Detroit and other international cities responded to the call.
Even Google.com turned its front page to black to signify 'lights out'
If you want to know more and participate, there are websites, YouTube channels, and accounts on MySpace, Flickr and Facebook.
While the Earth Hour might help raise some consciousness, the point of the project is to make the hour last a lifetime.
Instead of getting up at the end of the Earth Hour and flipping the 'on' switch to all those unnecessary appliances, the aim is to leave them switched off, and to make sure they remain off, unless they are needed.
If Sydney can cut its energy consumption by 10 percent just by turning off unnecessary appliances, then together, as citizens; as concerned residents of planet Earth, we could cut our overall energy needs by the same amount. And that means we would need fewer power stations; less coal; less oil.
It's not difficult.
8pm local time, March 28, 2009. Switch off all non-essential electrical items. Leave them off.
I killed the lights; switched off the server, pulled the plug on four items that normally sit on standby. The standby items will remain off for the forseeable. The server will remain off overnight, until the kids need to use their computers. The lights went back on at 9pm.
I tried logging into the earthhour.org site. It was unavailable. Either someone pulled the plug, or this idea took off big time. I kind of think it was the latter.
Cities throughout Australia, Asia, Middle East and Europe switched off for an hour or more. Sydney, Brisbane, Bangkok, Manila all switched off for an hour. The same in Aarhus, Copenhagen, Dublin and London.
Overall, it seems, the event caught the Zeitgeist, with up to 30 million people around the world participating.
Just to balance the writeup below by Hazelnut...
Note that I said it began as a consciousness-rasing exercise. It's not really about directly saving the planet or anything as noble as that. it's about the people showing their respective governments that they care (or not) about those governments' approach to environmental issues.
Hazelnut says he is based in the UK. I am normally in the UK, but for the 2009 Earth Hour I happened to be in Singapore. The contrast in coverage and publicity was striking. In Singapore, the local papers were full of the story, ahead of the event itself. I noticied lights go off in the condominiums (apartments) all around my own. In the UK, the event was barely mentioned outside the specialist press.
Perhaps -- and I think this quite likely -- the over-educated techies (that would be me) who reside in Europe and the US can criticise this consciousness-raising exercise as mere gesture politics. perhaps we can scoff at the ineffectual efforts of a few tree-hugging weirdoes. Perhaps we feel that, by installing insulation and using bio-diesel and planting trees to offset our carbon emissions, we are doing all we can.
On the other hand, we could use the opportunity to pass a message to our politicians and power companies that we care. That we mean business. That we will choose one supplier -- or one government -- over another, depending on their own environmental agendas.
Hazelnut will know that the power companies monitor power consumption by the second. That they know when a power surge will come as we all switch on our kettles during an ad break in a popular TV programme. If a power company sees a dip on the same scale during a stage-managed publicity stunt, I would argue that it sends a message to the power companies that they need to take our views seriously, because if they don't we can upset their carefully-managed grid supply system.
During those power surges, power suppliers can switch on fast-power stations such as hydropower units which take a few seconds to bring onstream and then a few more seconds to take off line. Spare power from fossil-fuel-powered stations is used to pump the water back up to the holding pen in the low-demand phase of the cycle.
But I digress. My main point is that each of us has to do what we think fit for the environment. I do what I can, but one more thing I can do is make my voice felt in unison with others. Switching a few lights off is a zero-cost way of doing that. That's my choice. I don't ask you to follow suit. Just to take note.