Lights Off
Earth Hour 2011 www.earthhour.org is an hour at night across the world where for just 60 minutes the glaring lights of cities and attractions were turned off and only essential lights were left burning. This day of recognition shows that collective activity to save power and reduce consumption and carbon emission can truly happen. It started in 2007 in Australia but has grown each year and is now a big worldwide event.
Here are some photos of the differences of lights off versus lights on http://www.aolnews.com/2011/03/26/earth-hour-2011-photos/ from last night’s earth hour ‘lights off’. You can see that life did not end and in some ways these places of life looked more peaceful with their lights off.
This exercise also shows each of us that we need to cut our own lights off too. We really don’t need to waste so much energy or money burning unneeded lighting. ‘Lights off’ also reminds me that hundreds of millions of our fellow world citizens don’t have lights at all and when the sun sets, they are literally ‘in the dark’. Small changes in their lives, like securing a single solar panel that can power a light bulb, recharge a cell phone or power a cooking eye to boil water and rice radically reshapes their lives in positive ways.
When the lights are out we can also see more stars. Sometimes the lights we burn are actually blinding us to the heavenly light of stars and those without lights are seeing a bigger galaxy than we will ever know.
Try turning the lights off and see if you world gets brighter!