Earth Hour 2008

On Saturday night, all around the world people came together to take part in "Earth Hour." Together, folks shut off lights and ceased to use electricity as a step to raise awareness about climate change. For one hour- from 8pm to 9pm local time, people were encouraged to turn off all their lights, televisions, etc in a collaborative effort to make a statement.

In the US, my wonderful city of Chicago was selected as the "flagship city" for Earth hour.

I have taken some great photos off of flickr of the nightline... this one is of just before the lights went off...It was a bit awkward at first- what does one do when I should be wrapping up sermon prep, running through it a couple more times, etc... but can't see!?! I turned off ALL of the electricity in my house, even to the point of it being annoying when I had to reset ALL of my clocks! For the record... I even turned my phone off!
During the Earth Hour, here is another pic of what it looked like:Significantly better! Though clearly everyone did not participate (and if you were in the city, I have to admit the orange glow never went away), I thought the turnout was pretty good. It was a nice night, too- so when the lights went down, Allison and I just went for an hour-long walk, which was quite nice.

Well done to the coordinators of Earth Hour. I hope folks learned something from this and are more conscious of how/when they're using electricity!

On Saturday night, all around the world people came together to take part in "Earth Hour." Together, a