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Hour of the Earth
Earth Hour! It snuck up on us on Maple weekend, of all times. Most of us thought Earth Hour was an event to be held later in the month. In years gone by, an editor would have asked me to charge my camera battery, sharpen my pencil and get out on the streets of the County to photograph what Earth Hour looked like in its neighbourhoods. This year, a message from a friend in Mississauga reminded us to power off for an hour. Maybe you did, too. Maybe you didn’t. Perhaps you think Earth Hour is a quirky waste of time. I get that. I can see how some folks would feel that way. What difference does one hour, sitting in the dark, make in a world of overuse and excess? One hour. Why bother? I guess the difference is we are becoming more aware of the depletion of our precious natural resources and less focused on saving a kilowatt- hour here and there.
Well, LOML and I did shut down for an hour on Saturday evening. We’re just a wild and quirky couple. Aside from a microscopic dip in our hydro consumption, we were overwhelmed by the peace and quiet in our home. Something was very obviously missing. We couldn’t hear that intense drone of electronic and electric things buzzing and whirring and clicking and ticking. Within our four walls, we had peace and quiet. LOML and I spent an hour talking about ways to conserve energy in our home and, quite honestly, we talked about the upcoming Easter weekend. A holiday weekend at our place usually means six to eight extra people showering, flushing, cooking and consuming. We’ve instituted a few conservation rules we expect everyone to abide by, including guests. At one point during the hour, we ventured out onto the front porch and were surprised by the hush that had come over our neighbourhood. While it wasn’t as dark and quiet as Earth Hours of years gone by, there was a noticeable difference. For us, the hour went by quickly and we decided we could probably do without on a more regular basis if we put our minds to it. It was only an hour. Perhaps we could do a whole day of being turned off. No phones. No computers. No cooking. Heck, no vacuuming or laundry, either! It would require a bit of preparation and planning, but I think we could do it for a day.
Earth Hour has been a thing, a global movement, for 10 years. It started as a lights-off event in Sydney, Australia in 2007. Now, close to 8,000 communities around the world are engaged in this one-hour event to share information, explore conservation ideas and brainstorm opportunities to create a more sustainable environment on our planet. Maybe our community, Prince Edward County, could register and host a onehour event in 2017. We could raise community awareness, have some fun and celebrate individual and County-wide successes. We’re very good at tourism. Why not add an Earth Hour destination event to the things-to-do in-Prince Edward-County calendar? It could definitely be a shoulder-season event.
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