I just heard today about Earth Hour. It is an international event that asks homes and businesses to turn off their lights and non-essential electrical appliances for one hour, from 8pm to 9pm on March 29 (today) to promote electricity conservation and create awareness. (See also on Wikipedia and BBC).
The idea comes from WWF Australia. The first Earth Hour was in 2007 and it was only in Sydney. This year the event has grown to cover 28 partner cities, where the cities themselves turn off all non-essential lights for one hour. Even if your city is not doing this, individual households and businesses can join. As of now 287,955 homes and 20,094 businesses have signed up.
I’m kinda bumped that no city in Germany (where I live) is joining the effort. I only heard about this today! But my partner and I will observe Earth Hour tonight anyways, and turn everything off for an hour. It’ll be hard to be away from the Net for an hour, but I think I’ll manage 
We’re also writing to our city to ask if the city can join next year. We’re also writing to WWF Germany to see if they want to coordinate Earth Hour next year.
I’d like to give kudos to San Francisco. San Francisco had come up with their own program earlier, called Lights Out, which occurred in October. But this year they decided to move it to March 29 to align Earth Hour. So rather than running a competing event, San Francisco is supporting Earth Hour and the Lights Out programme is being replaced by Earth Hour.
Tag-lines:
“See the difference you can make.”
“Dark city, bright idea.”
