Lights go Out in Many Cities, but not all for Earth Hour

In contrast, power usage was higher than average in the Wellington region during the "lights out" hour and The Dominion Post photographed several landmarks around the city including the Town Hall, Parliament Buildings, the Cenotaph, and the Victoria University Law School, that were all brightly lit between 8pm and 9pm.
Wellington Mayor Kerry Prendergast said the city was not an official participant in the initiative this year.
"There was no marketing money, we came into it late so we didn't have any support to market it to the community," she said.
She earlier said that the council would lead by example and turn off lights.
Lights in trees at Oriental Bay and Civic Square were switched off and, while allowing for public safety, the council had turned off external lighting at swimming pools, libraries, recreation centres and other council-owned buildings.
The Town Hall lights could have been left on because there was an event being held inside, she said.
Next year, when Wellington is an official participant in the Earth Hour event, she hopes the council can do more.
A spokeswoman for Speaker Margaret Wilson said Parliamentary Service was aware of the Earth Hour initiative but it had not been asked to take part.

According to data from the Philippine Electricity Market Corp., power consumption dropped by about 16 megawatts in Metro Manila, and up to 56 MW in Luzon.
The governments of Quezon City, Manila, Pasay, Parañaque, Caloocan and Makati, as well as nongovernment organizations and private businesses also took part in the activity.
“Filipinos truly showed the world that we can unite and stand together against climate change,” said Saño.

In all, hundreds of cities in 35 different countries participated in the event.
In North America, cities such as Toronto, Chicago, San Francisco took part, with famous landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge and the Sears Tower going dark.
In Chicago, more than 200 downtown buildings dimmed their lights, including the stripe of white light around the top of the John Hancock Center and the red-and-white marquee outside Wrigley Field.
In Phoenix, all downtown city-owned buildings went dark for one hour.   And in San Francisco, restaurants operated with only candlelight while Coat Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge went completely dark.
Even Internet search engine Google lent its support by blackening its normally white Web site and urging its customers to participate in the event, "We've turned the lights out. Now it's your turn," the company posted on its Web site.
The initiative started last year in Australia where an estimated 2.2 million observed a blackout estimated to have cut energy use by more than 10% for the hour.  But this year, organizers said 380 cities across South America, Europe and North America also participated. Earth Hour officials hoped 100 million people would turn off their nonessential lights and electronic goods for the hour.

Bourne said the response from around the world had been astounding.
While 26 cities are officially signed up for 'Earth Hour', Bourne said the campaign had already stretched well beyond that and that the intention was for the voluntary, 60-minute blackout to be even bigger in 2009.
"In pretty much every country in the world, someone has signed up. Whether it be one, two, three or 3,000 individuals," he told AFP.
"Basically every continent including Antarctica had some involvement and what I think will happen next year is that we will get deeper and deeper involvement in Asia, in Russia.
"We're pretty certain, that when we do it next year, China will become very much more involved," he added.

Londoners cut their electricity use for Earth Hour by two per cent, saving enough juice to light 117,000 bulbs for an hour.
Power use dipped noticeably in Ontario during Saturday night's global event, falling by more than five per cent across the province and by 8.7 per cent in Toronto, the event's flagship Canadian participant.
London's two-per-cent savings may not seem like much, but Jay Stanford, the city's environmental services director, said it's a good start.
"We're quite pleased with that result for the first year," he said yesterday.

Mllions of Australians joined Earth Hour on Saturday March 29, between 8.00pm and 9.00pm by flicking the switch, turning appliances off stand-by and enjoying an hour of quiet darkness.

Sydney embraced its second Earth Hour tonight, as hundreds of thousands of citizens turned off their lights across the city between 8 and 9pm to make a statement against climate change.
Most skyscrapers in the CBD were darkened, though if the groups gathered in harbourside parks were expecting a sudden blackout, they would have been disappointed - the majority of high-rise buildings had flicked the switch before 8pm.

Google made an environmental gesture today by turning the lights out on the U.S. version of its search page. The black background doesn't save energy, but it's Google's way of observing Earth Hour. The global event, created by the World Wildlife Fund, encourages people around the world to turn off their lights at 8:00 PM today, March 29, for an hour.