Saturday night at 8:00, the Atlanta skyline goes partially dark. The lights stay off for one hour in the city’s tallest buildings and most popular tourist attractions. At 9:00, things return to normal in Atlanta. But now lights are off in Chicago, where it’s 8:00 Central Time.
An hour later, it’s 8:00 Mountain Time and the city of Phoenix goes partially dark. In another 60 minutes, the lights go out at Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge and other San Francisco area landmarks.
The scenario is not some rolling blackout or belated effect of the Y2K bug, but a publicity campaign to draw attention to energy conservation, carbon emissions and climate change.
“Earth Hour,” which is being organized by the World Wildlife Fund, is expected to be observed in some form or fashion by local governments, businesses and individuals in more than 200 cities around the world tomorrow (Saturday March 29) as 8pm rolls around to each time zone..
The event was first observed last year in Sydney, Australia, where more than two million people turned out their lights. During that hour, the city reduced its energy consumption by an estimated 10 percent.
But Earth Hour organizers concede the event is not a 60 minute solution. They tell me their primary goal is to generate long-term awareness.
“To be honest, we could turn off every light in the world for an hour and it wouldn’t have a demonstrable change in terms of climate change,” said WWF spokeswoman Leslie Aun. “What’s important here is really the symbolism of people saying that they care about this issue.”
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