Green Thinking Blog

I was surfing the net today when I went to my favorite search engine, Google, and I was brought to a black screen. If you have ever been to Google, you would know, they usually change up their letters for the seasons, but not the background. I was intrigued. Turns out Google has blackened their screen in support of Earth Hour, taking place around the world today, March 29, from 8 p.m. - 9 p.m. Google believes in combating climate change, though this was an event anyone could participate in, and they did something about it (an excellent process to live by).

So, what is Earth Hour? It is an event that was created in Sydney, Australia in 2007 by the World Wildlife Fund to inspire people to take action on climate change. Picture this: March 31, 2007, Sydney, 2.2 million people and 2100 businesses turn out the lights. Weddings are conducted by candlelight, the Harbour Bridge goes dark, and a difference was made. If everyone in Sydney turned off their lights for one hour every day for a year it would be equivalent to taking 48,616 cars off the road for a year! Imagine if you did this in your home town, and everyone did it in theirs!

The site also gives you great ideas of things to do in the dark…not those things…but things like:

• Chill OUT (my fave) - Take this hour for you. Reflect, Read, Ponder, Converse. Get back in touch with humanity vs. your hand-held devices or your romance with the television.
• Clean Up the ‘Hood - Go outside, walk down your street, & pick up garbage. Simple, close to home, and contributing to society—plus, people take notice.
• Turn Down the Heat - Take this opportunity to lower your thermostat (home and ‘fridge), by two degrees. You won’t even notice and it makes a huge difference.

Join today, the countdown is on!

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 29th, 2008 at 11:49 am and is filed under Climate Change, Electricity, Lifestyle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.