[Pil-pc-oceania] Earth Hour a Sydney success - now to go national

[pacific-edge]

Thrill of people power

John Huxley. Sydney Morning Herald
April 2, 2007

AND Sydney said, just for a change, "Let there be dark." And there was dark.
And the peoples of the world saw the dark, that it was good - at the very
least, a good time to pause, to reflect upon the problem of global warming
and how it might be arrested.

So it was on Saturday night when - in a spirit of environmental
enlightenment, of personal empowerment - thousands of businesses, tens,
possibly hundreds of thousands of homes, joined the Big Switch Off, as the
city celebrated the first Earth Hour.

Energy Australia says the switch-off produced a power saving of 10.2 per
cent in the city centre alone, compared with usage on a normal Saturday
night with similar temperatures and conditions. That was twice the expected
saving. Suburban savings will be released from today, but it could be
another two days before the full readings are available, so massive was the
response from the homes of Sydney and beyond.

Figures alone cannot convey the depth and breadth of commitment to Earth
Hour and the green principles and - yes, if necessary - politics that
underpin an idea whose time has come and whose future is now to go global.

>From Bradleys Head to Balmain, Mrs Macquaries Chair to Milsons Point, crowds
filled the harbour foreshores with family picnics and barbecues. Not to
watch fireworks. Not to see a light show. But simply to see what happens
when Sydney loses its world-famous glitter.

As 7.30pm neared, the true green believers charged their glasses, consulted
their watches and started and aborted countdowns, before cheering and
toasting a new era as lights started going out across the city. Harbour
Bridge. Opera House. skyscraper business, shop and hotel signs. Luna Park.
The Coca-Cola sign at Kings Cross. Even Kirribilli House, from where the
Prime Minister watched the evening unfold. All were plunged into darkness or
substantially dimmed.

Some 65,000 households had pledged to support Earth Hour, but many more got
the message as, spontaneously, suburbs moved over to the dark side too. One
taxi driver, nearing Mosman at 9pm, said: "The powerlines must be down."

Wedding guests ate candlelit meals, musicians played unplugged, people
joined in cycling, sailing, belly-dancing, yoga, conversation and other
eco-friendly pursuits. More and more people took stock of their real energy
needs and turned off.

"It's all about doing the right thing, switching off lights, not leaving the
computer on," explained Mitch Gibson, who had joined friends to observe
Earth Hour and celebrate the 39th birthday of one of their number, Collun
Dearman.

Only spectator sports, such as the Waratahs at Aussie Stadium, the Swans at
Telstra Stadium, went on largely undimmed. As Donald Horne, author of The
Lucky Country, remarked, "Sport to many Australians is life and the rest a
shadow."

Of course, the blackness was not complete. Nor was it ever expected or meant
to be: essential safety and security lights were left on. The target was
display, discretionary, thoughtlessly, carelessly left-on lighting.

Greg Bourne, chief executive of the environment group WWF Australia - which
with Fairfax Media, publisher of the Herald, organised Earth Hour - said he
had never seen Sydney's skyline look so dark.

"There's not an advertising sign up there that I can see and many buildings
are completely dark; it is really quite amazing."

His enthusiasm was shared by Nick Lomb, curator of astronomy at the Sydney
Observatory, where some 250 guests gathered to hear a lecture on urban light
pollution and take advantage of the unaccustomed dark with some enhanced
star-gazing.

"The response has been fantastic," said Dr Lomb, who explained that the
switch-off had increased several times the number of stars, normally only
about 100, visible in the polluted Sydney skies. Visibility on Saturday was
of "outer-suburban" levels, said one astronomer.

Dr Lomb's only regret on an evening of generally clear skies and cool
breezes that drove eco-party goers under their doonas was that the moon was
near full and bright. "At least it's solar-powered," he added. "So we
shouldn't complain."

For most people, though, the degree of darkness achieved was irrelevant.
Kirsten Lees, of Lane Cove, had come to observe Earth Hour with her friend
Tracy Everingham, of Greenwich, and their children, all six or under, Chloe
and Emma, and Oliver and Charlotte, respectively.

"The kids have been asking, 'has it begun, has it happened yet?'," said
Kirsten as she looked across the harbour from Kirribilli. "And I suppose for
them the effect is not all that dramatic.

"But that's not the point, really. This is an opportunity to stop, and
think, and talk to them about saving the planet. They're already doing
projects about it at school. It's a chance to tell the politicians that
we're here, that we care. It's symbolic, and hopefully, it's a precedent."

That seems certain. Even before the big turn-off there were plans to repeat
the exercise next year, not just in Sydney but elsewhere in Australia. On
Saturday several cities and towns, including Byron Bay and Hobart, turned
off public lights in an act of solidarity.

Plans to go global were also greatly enhanced. For as Sydney blinked, news
of its initiative flashed round the world.

By yesterday morning, news of Earth Hour was among the lead items on the BBC
World Service news. It was also on news and web pages from around the world.

Significantly, Greg Bourne left Sydney for Singapore yesterday for a WWF
conference at which he will discuss the Earth Hour concept with
international colleagues, including from Beijing.

Back on the ground, Vera Sprothena journalist, was preparing to file a
report for the German newspaper Die Zeit. A busload of Japanese tourists
nodded sympathetically as it was explained why, on this special day, they
could so easily pick out the Southern Cross in the night sky.

And Tara van der Berg, one of a group of 150 students from Reddam sister
schools in South Africa, enjoying a night at Luna Park, promised to spread
the Earth Hour message in Johannesburg and Cape Town.

Saturday's hour of darkness marked the start of a campaign that aims, among
other things, to reduce Sydney's greenhouse gas emissions by 5 per cent this
year. Despite the success of the first Earth Hour, that - and subsequent
decreases - will not be easily achieved. Inevitably, as the lights were
switched back on, the city's icons went back on show, and people digested
what all agreed had been an illuminating experience, some sceptics remained
unconvinced.

So what did one hour of sitting in semi-darkness prove? So why was North
Sydney temporarily gridlocked with vehicles - many of them four-wheel-drive
- disgorging self-proclaimed greenies? So why were newspapers still chopping
down forests to produce fat supplements? (To be fair, their paper is
recycled, and yesterday's Sun-Herald was produced by candlelight and with
green energy, provided through purchase of GreenPower credits from Climate
Friendly, an alternative energy supplier).

But no one said breaking the wasteful habits of a lifetime would be easy.
What Earth Hour did proved beyond doubt is that Sydneysiders do care, that
they do want change and, as Ms Lees suggested as she surveyed a sea of
smiling, lantern-lit faces, that changing can be fun.

.....................................................

Enlightened city knocks the world's lights out

Sunanda Creagh, Urban Affairs Reporter
April 2, 2007

MORE than half of Sydneysiders - as many as 2.2 million - switched off their
lights to celebrate Earth Hour on Saturday night, a poll has found.

No one saw this avalanche of support coming - only 65,000 households had
pledged to support the event.

"It gives you a lot of hope about humanity," said Andy Ridley, a spokesman
for the organiser, WWF.

In the city centre alone energy consumption fell 10.2 per cent between
7.30pm and 8.30pm, saving 24.86 tonnes of carbon dioxide from being released
into the air.

Central Sydney's mighty effort is the equivalent of taking 48,613 cars off
the road for one hour.

The overwhelming success of Earth Hour has inspired WWF to make it an annual
international event. Just hours after the lights went out, the WWF chief
executive, Greg Bourne, flew to Singapore to convince South-East Asian WWF
branch chiefs that it could go international.

The polling company AMR Interactive contacted 937 Sydney residents between
8.45pm on Saturday and 2pm yesterday and found that 57 per cent had switched
off their lights, turned off appliances, or had been personally involved in
Earth Hour in some way.

The poll found 53 per cent turned off the lights at home, 25 per cent
switched off household appliances and 17 per cent turned off the television.
Three per cent switched to Green Power over the weekend. A third of Sydney
workers said their organisation took part in Earth Hour.

Mr Ridley said Mr Bourne was confident of garnering world support for Earth
Hour.

"Greg works on the principle that if you don't believe it, it won't happen.
He'll push it pretty hard," he said. "I hope they say, 'Fantastic, let's see
if we can do it.' Let's see if we can do it in major cities around the
world."

The idea is that a viewer from space would be able to see darkness cascade
over the planet for next year's Earth Hour, as lights went out in a domino
effect.

"That's the picture in our heads. At this time of the year, it gets dark
about 6pm everywhere round the world. You couldn't do it in Europe in the
summer because it doesn't get dark till 11 at night."

The success of Sydney's Earth Hour relied on the good nature of ordinary
people, Mr Ridley said. "Before you even start talking about alternative
power, you can just do a simple thing like turn your lights off and you've
already done a great thing to reduce energy consumption."

The 10.2 per cent fall in CBD energy consumption was more than double the
expectations of Energy Australia.

"We thought 5 per cent would have been a good result, and given that we got
10 per cent, we thought that was an exceptional result," a spokesman said
yesterday. "People really came to the cause and made the effort."

Energy Australia analysed consumption levels for a typical March Saturday
night for the past three years, taking into account the temperature and the
weather.

"The CBD temperature during Earth Hour was 19.8 degrees and typical energy
consumption at this temperature between 7.30 and 8.30 is 228,180 KWh. Actual
electricity consumption in the CBD Š was 204,900 KWh," the spokesman said.

The electricity saved would be enough to power more than 200,000 standard
televisions for the hour and equates to a reduction of 24.86 tonnes of CO2.
"This is the equivalent of 48,613 cars off the road for the hour," the
spokesman said.

Integral Energy, whose electricity network covers greater western Sydney and
the Illawarra, found substations in residential areas showed a noticeable
drop in load between 7.15pm and 8pm.

"In areas such as Blacktown, Penrith and west Liverpool, between 7.30 and
7.35pm our network controllers observed a dramatic drop in load across our
network equivalent to the amount of electricity needed to fully power 6500
homes," a spokeswoman said yesterday.

Other towns and cities joined in the effort. "There was a lot of community
interest," the Mayor of Byron Bay, Jan Barham, said yesterday. "People were
off organising their own thing and a lot of restaurants participated."