Earth Hour

File:Earth-Hour-Logo.jpg

The logo for Earth Hour

Earth Hour is an international event that asks households and businesses to turn off their lights and non-essential electrical appliances for one hour on the evening of March 29th at 8PM local time to promote electricity conservation and thus lower carbon emissions.

It is promoted by World Wide Fund for Nature Australia (WWF), an environmental lobby group, and the Sydney Morning Herald. The first Earth Hour was held in Sydney, Australia between 7:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. on 31 March, 2007. The 2007 Earth Hour is estimated to have cut Sydney's mains electricity consumption by between 2.1% and 10.2% for that hour, with as many as 2.2 million people taking part. A second Earth Hour, in 2008, is planned to be an international event held in Sydney, many partner cities, and individuals around the world participating.

Origins

Earth Hour, under the working title 'the big flick', was conceived by members of WWF-Australia's communication team in December 2005 as a possible campaign to engage all parts of the Australian community on the need to address climate change.

A partnership was formed in August 2006 between WWF-Australia's Andy Ridley, Leo Burnett's Nigel Marsh and Fairfax Media's Phil McLean with a planned campaign date of early 2007. Earth Hour was launched publicly as a Sydney-only event on December 16 2006 by Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore and took place at 7.30pm on March 31 2007.

Following significant interest from both inside Australia and around the world, Earth Hour was formed into a non-profit entity owned by WWF-Australia, Leo Burnett and Fairfax Media. The decision was taken to make Earth Hour an open source model, allowing any genuinely interested individual, company, media or government anywhere in the world to adopt the campaign for 2008.

Earth Hour 2007

Sydney Harbour Bridge and Sydney Opera House during Earth hour

Many buildings in Sydney participated in Earth Hour

The 2007 Earth Hour was part of a wider awareness campaign that aimed to reduce Sydney's carbon emissions by 5%. 68,506 individuals and 2,270 businesses registered their intention to participate on the Earth Hour website. EnergyAustralia, a utility, attributed a 10.2% decrease in consumption during the hour to the campaign. A poll of about 1000 people conducted afterwards suggested that 57% of Sydneysiders participated – some 2.2 million people.

Earth Hour 2008

Strong backing from the City of Sydney and its Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, helped to make Earth Hour 2008 an international event.

As of 24 March, over 11,900 businesses and 188,000 individuals had indicated their intention to participate at earthhour.org.

Earth Hour 2008 will include the following "partner cities".

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Prior to 2008, San Francisco had been running a Lights Out program of their own that occurred in October. For 2008 it was being moved to March 29th to align with Australia's Earth Hour. This also happen to be the year that Earth Hour became an international event and San Francisco was asked to be a partner city in Earth Hour. Rather than have a competing event, San Francisco is supporting Earth Hour and all Lights Out efforts will now move to supporting the international Earth Hour event.

Criticism

Earth Hour 2007 was the target of criticism from commentators who question whether humans are responsible for global warming, such as Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair. Other criticisms centred on the Hour's effectiveness in reducing carbon emissions, whether the significant reduction in electricity consumption reported occurred at all, and questionable coverage of the event by the media conglomerate that sponsored it.

According to figures from EnergyAustralia, a local utility, mains electricity consumption was 10.2% lower during the Hour than would be expected given the time, weather conditions and past four years' consumption patterns. Although the Herald equated this with "taking 48,613 cars off the road for one hour," Bolt noted that it also represents taking a mere six cars off the road for a year - a negligible practical impact.

Blogger Andrew Landeryou noted that the drop-off in consumption could have been caused by consumers shifting their electricity use to occur before and after the Hour.

The 10.2% figure was itself challenged in a detailed analysis by David Solomon, a student at the University of Chicago. Solomon used eight years of electricity usage data to conclude that the Earth Hour-inspired drop was only 6.33%, and that after other potential factors were taken into account, only 2.10%, "statistically indistinguishable from zero."

Fairfax coverage

MediaWatch, a television show scrutinising the press, reported on claims that The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age had run misleading photographs of the event. The newspapers, part of Fairfax Media, an Earth Hour sponsor, published misleading captions on 'before' and 'after' photos of the event and over-exposed the 'before' shot to exaggerate the event's impact. Though Fairfax angrily rejected the claims, the company later admitted that the captions were incorrect. Fairfax's coverage of the event it sponsored was criticised by non-Fairfax commentators as biased.

Graphical identity

Earth Hour is represented by a logotype, shown above, depicting part of the Earth in the shape of the number 60, as in the 60 minutes of an hour. The logotype must always appear on a black background.

The brand is owned jointly by WWF Australia, Fairfax Media and Leo Burnett.

External links

• Earth Hour - official website
• Christchurch Earth Hour - Christchurch and Canterbury, New Zealand information
• Earth Hour 2008 - a collection of Earth Hour 2008 news articles and press releases