The Las Vegas strip (below) and other global icons went dark on Saturday for Earth Hour.
McDonald’s powered down in Chicago. Twitter was alight with Earth Hour tweets.
The annual event, launched in 2007 by the World Wildlife Fund, aims to encourage people to cut energy use and curb greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels.
World emissions have risen by about 70 percent since the 1970s. China has recently overtaken the United States as the top emitter, ahead of the European Union, Russia and India.
What did you do, if anything, to switch off?
(Photos: Reuters\Mario Anzuoni, McDonald’s)
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12 comments so far
We lit our candles and spent the hour talking and telling stories as a family. We decided we liked it so much, we may make it a monthly event.
- Posted by Colleen O'NealWe powered down and went to bed early.
- Posted by Cathy GrayWe miss seeing all the stars because of all the lights
I did my part in an odd way, but I’m sure many others did the same. I just went to bed at 8:30, instead of 12:00 or so. Turned off computers, televisions, lights, phones, etc.
- Posted by Matt PaxtonI do this everynight, and keep em off for about 8 hours. It is my way of helping the enviroment. I also switched to mercury filled CFL’s so I lower my energy bill.
- Posted by Tim?I did my part by protesting the stupidy of excercise by turning all of my lights on. They could probably see my place from the space station.
- Posted by BobBThe way i see it, (slightly askewed), is that those who Did turn off the juice, Did “something”. Symbolic or not, those who did not, did nothing. I prefer the former.
- Posted by Rana sylvaticaFor the second or third year running, my and my husband went out the evening of Earth Hour, thus accidentally participating. It’s the sort of thing I’d want to do if I remembered, but I’m not sure we’re in the full spirit of the thing if it’s not intentional.
- Posted by JoannaWe did shut down all non-essential equipment in the office, and I personally went to bed early and shut off all my equipment at home. I would like to see a graph for that hour across the U.S. to see how much power came off the grid for that time period.
- Posted by Blue CosmoBrian From far northern California: Our family participated by shutting all power off, including most plugged in items (removed plugs from walls), shut off printers, phones, everything. We went out to our yard, listened to the radio on a hand-crank radio, had a few drinks and jumped on the trampoline. We had fun for over an hour without power. We need to try to do this more. Candles are a nice thing!
- Posted by Brianif we didn’t have electric then we wood all be burning coal or wood to cook our food. with no electric to power our waste disposal we would actually contaminate our earth faster.
- Posted by dougYes, can’t Reuters find anything more worthwhile to post than Earth hour and safe bleach?
- Posted by AnubisWe turned off ALL the power in the house, using the master switch on the fuse box, no eletric used at all.
Had a beer or three, told a couple of goast stories, snuggled up with each other.
It was great
Also took the time tried to work out why the U.S thinks it needs to consume so much more energy per person than the rest of the world, with huge engined cars, air-con everywhere and lush green golf courses out in deserts for god’s sake!
Still, now that Bush and his ‘Don’t worry about the enviroment, God will step in and fix his creation if we screw it up to much’ approach are no longer, maybe a policy based on observed data and a scientific look at the problems being encounted and potential solutions will some some beneficial outcomes.
- Posted by ChrisChaosSay start with $10 per gallon gas price and take it from there.