Thread: Major Cities Go Dark for Earth Hour

Major Cities Go Dark for Earth Hour

By SHAWN POGATCHNIK,
AP
Posted: 2008-03-29 23:33:25
Filed Under: Science News, World News

CHICAGO (March 29) - From the Sydney Opera House to Rome's Colosseum to the Sears Tower's famous antennas in Chicago, floodlit icons of civilization went dark Saturday for Earth Hour, a worldwide campaign to highlight the threat of climate change.

The environmental group WWF urged governments, businesses and households to turn back to candle power for at least 60 minutes starting at 8 p.m. wherever they were.

The campaign began last year in Australia, and traveled this year from the South Pacific to Europe to North America in cadence with the setting of the sun.

"What's amazing is that it's transcending political boundaries and happening in places like China, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea," said Andy Ridley, executive director of Earth Hour. "It really seems to have resonated with anybody and everybody."

Earth Hour officials hoped 100 million people would turn off their nonessential lights and electronic goods for the hour. Electricity plants produce greenhouse gases that fuel climate change.

In Chicago, lights on more than 200 downtown buildings were dimmed Saturday night, including the stripe of white light around the top of the John Hancock Center. The red-and-white marquee outside Wrigley Field also went dark.

"There's a widespread belief that somehow people in the United States don't understand that this is a problem that we're lazy and wedded to our lifestyles. (Earth Hour) demonstrates that that is wrong," Richard Moss, a member of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the climate change vice president for WWF, said in Chicago on Saturday.

Workers in Phoenix turned out the lights in all downtown city-owned buildings for one hour. Darkened restaurants glowed with candlelight in San Francisco while the Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower and other landmarks extinguished lights for an hour.

New Zealand and Fiji were first out of the starting blocks this year. And in Sydney, Australia - where an estimated 2.2 million observed the blackout last year - the city's two architectural icons, the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, faded to black against a dramatic backdrop of a lightning storm.

Lights also went out at the famed Wat Arun Buddhist temple in Bangkok, Thailand; shopping and cultural centers in Manila, Philippines; several castles in Sweden and Denmark; the parliament building in Budapest, Hungary; a string of landmarks in Warsaw, Poland; and both London City Hall and Canterbury Cathedral in England.

Greece, an hour ahead of most of Europe, was the first on the continent to mark Earth Hour. On the isle of Aegina, near Athens, much of its population marched by candlelight to the port. Parts of Athens itself, including the floodlit city hall, also turned to black.

In Ireland, where environmentalists are part of the coalition government, lights-out orders went out for scores of government buildings, bridges and monuments in more than a dozen cities and towns.

But the international banks and brokerages of Dublin's financial district blazed away with light, illuminating floor after empty floor of desks and idling computers.

"The banks should have embraced this wholeheartedly and they didn't. But it's a start. Maybe next year," said Cathy Flanagan, an Earth Hour organizer in Dublin.

Ireland's more than 7,000 pubs elected not to take part - in part because of the risk that Saturday night revelers could end up smashing glasses, falling down stairs, or setting themselves on fire with candles.

Likewise, much of Europe - including France, Germany, Spain and European Union institutions - planned nothing to mark Earth Hour.

Internet search engine Google lent its support to Earth Hour by blackening its normally white home page and challenging visitors: "We've turned the lights out. Now it's your turn."

Associated Press writers Shawn Pogatchnik in Dublin, Ireland; Tanalee Smith in Sydney, Australia; and other AP reporters worldwide contributed to this report.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2008-03-29 11:41:03

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/major-citi ... 0000000001

LOL, come on people of the world, you can do better! Throw the main switch at the meter. Live off the grid. Get real, spark up the Bar-B-Q the next time your hungry. Or better yet turn into a vegan and just eat grass and other greens. Don't eat the poison ivy though, or it will make your butt itch.

On the serious side, Florida is melting. Carbon in the air mixed with rain turns into carbonic acid. Carbonic acid melts limestone. Thus run for your lives, Florida is melting. And you thought you just had to worry about the Antartica ice shelf.

Darn, I just opened a bottle of seltzer water, anybody got any carbon credits for sale?

I just turned up all my lights and plugged in all my guitar amps which I CRANKED UP. All at the same time.Its ok because I planted a weed in my back yard today to make up for it.

Anybody with a guilty conscience considering buying carbon credits? If you are willing to circumvent the Al Gore recommended method of sending money to his company for credits, than perhaps we can make a deal. Send me cash and I will plant some trees in your name and will even share the firewood they will produce in the future.

Tip for the day: Eat more beans! More corn for the pigs, mean tastier bowls of ham and beans.