Earth Hour returns: Organizers hoping more people drawn to conservation effort
Saturday, March 28, 2009Kids, businesses and club owners seek improvement on '08
By Robert Mitchum | Tribune reporter
March 28, 2009
When Jen Pontoriero's family participated in Earth Hour at their Woodridge home last year, her children's excitement was tempered by their neighborhood's lack of participation.
So Kayla, 6, and Luke, 5, decided to spread the word for this year's event, which asks people and businesses around the world to turn off their lights from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. Saturday. To raise awareness, the kids made a YouTube video—featuring literal tree-hugging—and passed out handwritten fliers reading "turn off your lights and make the earth happy."
"They really get a big kick out of it," Pontoriero said.
The organizers of this year's Earth Hour hope to see similar enthusiasm across Chicago and nearly 4,000 other cities around the world. After a successful debut in 2008, more than 200 buildings in downtown Chicago have pledged to turn off non-essential lights for the encore, including the Sears Tower, Wrigley Field and the Navy Pier Ferris wheel.
Restaurants and bars around town have organized special events surrounding the voluntary blackout, with candlelight dinners and drink specials such as glow-in-the-dark cocktails and "eco-tinis."
The activities emphasize the event's potential to show people how to conserve energy without sacrificing entertainment, said Darron Collins, managing director of the World Wildlife Fund, the organization that coordinates the event.
"I think what people like about Earth Hour is that it is fun and it tries to tap into people's creativity," Collins said.
The 2008 Earth Hour cut the Chicago area's electrical use by roughly 7 percent, said Rachel Gerds, a spokeswoman for Commonwealth Edison Co. Adjusted for weather, ComEd customers saved more than 800 megawatt hours, the equivalent of 150 acres of trees, Gerds said.
But not everyone is convinced that those savings are meaningful. A 2008 paper by David Solomon, a business graduate student at the University of Chicago, found that the original Earth Hour, celebrated in 2007 in Sydney only marginally affected energy use because of the relatively inconsequential contribution of household light.
"Earth Hour would almost certainly have had a larger effect on electricity use had it been billed as a … 'take a cold shower for the day' festival," Solomon wrote.
But those criticisms are misplaced, Collins said, pointing out that the average household spends 15 percent of its income on energy costs.
"Even if you don't believe that the climate is changing, or that humans have an impact on climate, efficiency is a good thing," Collins said. "It makes sense to reduce individual consumption."
