By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
The darkness looms. Earth Hour is just a day away, so get ready to observe the biggest one yet, along with more than 2,600 cities across the globe in more than 80 countries.
Hold your own black out at 8:30 p.m. (in your time zone) on Saturday at home or in your ‘hood and you’ll be simpatico with people in Egypt where they’re turning out the lights on the Sphinx, Paris where the Eiffel Tower will go dark and NYC where Broadway marquees will blink out at the appropriate time. (Not to mention the Las Vegas strip, the Sears Tower in Chicago, the St. Louis Arch, the Golden Gate Bridge, those giant Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur. You get the picture.)
The rolling global lights out, a fitting effort to gather attention for fighting global warming, has grown like an electric surge since it began in Sydney, Australia just two years ago. It has become a mini-Earth Day preview, a high note signaling a world united in its desire to do something about the future of the planet.
In the U.S., participation among cities grew to 220 this year, and now three states, Arkansas, Pennsylvania and California, have given the event their endorsements, according to the latest news release by the event’s sponsor World Wildlife Fund.
In Arkansas, officials will turn off the lights at the state capitol dome. Ditto the dome on Pennsylvania’s capitol building in Harrisburg.
In California and Pennsylvania, legislative resolutions urge residents to participate by turning off non-essential lights at home, businesses and in state buildings.
“Fighting global warming will take a concerted effort at every level, from the family who separates out its recycling each week to the federal government working to cut carbon emissions nationwide,” said Pennsylvania State Rep. Tim Briggs, who introduced the Earth Hour resolution. “We are all in this together and I’m proud that Pennsylvania continues to be a leader in the green movement.”
WWF recognizes that Earth Hour is a symbolic event that will not solve global warming, said Dr. Richard Moss, vice president for climate change at WWF.
But, he added, “symbols have played an important role in the politcal history of our country – from the Boston tea party to Dr. Martin Luther King’s march on Selma. We hope that the symbolism of Earth Hour will likewise motivate people to act.”
Amen to that. But I still think it should be Earth Night. We’d save a lot more kilowatts and I like the parallelism, Earth Day, Earth Night. Sunrise. Sunset.
Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media
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