Posts by: earthhourus

The problem of climate change has always seemed to sound like a daunting challenge. When one hears about climate change and its disastrous consequences on the planet, people tend to believe in its inevitability, thinking that the problem is too tremendous and unstoppable, leaving us all hopeless as we face its imminent effects. What we don’t realize is the power one person has in contributing on a solution for climate change. With just one click of a light switch, you can help raise awareness and at the same time discover just how much one household can do in helping lower the world’s energy consumption. This is the impact that the Earth Hour hopes to achieve on a world-wide scale, it being the largest annual environmental event the world has seen in history.

Earth Hour is a global awareness campaign initiated by the World Wildlife Fund that aims to encourage businesses, establishments, and households to turn off their lights for one hour a year in unison. This action is hoped to establish awareness on the growing problem of climate change and the urgent necessity to take action on it.  The campaign had first started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia, as approximately 2.2 million of its residents turned off their lights for one hour in the evening. Following the success that the Earth Hour sustained in Sydney since 2007, the rest of the world started to show support for the campaign as well.  To note, the event that took place in 2012 occurred on March 31, from 8:30-9:30 in the evening, with the slogan, “I will if you will.” In this year alone, over 7,000 cities and villages in 152 countries participated in the campaign, switching off their lights for the event, and sending a powerful message for action against climate change.

It is interesting to note that just in a span of one hour, electricity consumption greatly reduced in Sydney alone by approximately 10.2%. Several other cities in the world as well, such as Bangkok, Manila, Christchurch, Toronto, and Dubai, experienced a dip in the energy consumption during their own respective runs of the campaign. The impact this has for every country on a global scale can therefore be imagined, what more if countries really did come together to participate in larger scale efforts to curb climate change on a more sustainable level.

Of course, the success of the campaign did not rely solely on the number of people who followed the one-hour blackout. The Earth Hour campaign over the years has made use of popular social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google Plus, to engage the virtual community into going beyond the united front of the hour and taking up more efforts for sustainable solutions to climate change. Since its success in 2007 to capture world-wide attention, the campaign has moved from aiming for surface-level awareness towards getting people to question the status quo of the environment. Now, their goal has been towards giving the initial push—the justification—behind why society must now act towards solving climate change, which is ultimately the very reason why this campaign even came to be.

With thousands of cities and towns in hundreds of countries, millions of people switch their lights off annually to support an environmental event—Earth Hour.

You might have seen it through Advertising campaigns over the past, but what is “Earth Hour”?

Earth Hour is global environmental movement. It is an annual event that seeks to unite people to protect the planet. This event happens every year towards the end of March between 8:80PM and 9:30PM in the country’s local time. Earth’s special hour draws communities together all around the world to celebrate a commitment to the world by turning off lights for one hour. Everyone and anyone who want to share a common goal and commitment is allowed to join the campaign.

The Earth Hour was conceived in 2004 by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Australia after being confronted with scientific findings about the world’s climate change.  WWF made an effort to meet with Leo Burnett, a worldwide Advertising Agency, to discuss about an advertising campaign to raise people’s awareness about the world’s declining environment state.

According to WWF, the organizer, Earth Hour is held at the second to the last or last week of March because it is the nearest coincidental sunset times in the northern and southern hemispheres. Thus, this ensures the greatest visual impact for the “lights out” event.

Earth Hour encourages everyone to be a leader on environmental solutions through their individual actions. The Earth Hour campaign and event is a platform to show people what they can do to reduce their environmental impact. It simply encourages everyone to be responsible for the impact they make on the planet, making behavioral changes to sustain a healthy environmental lifestyle.

The turning off the lights symbolizes the first step in everyone’s commitment to a more sustainable lifestyle. By switching off the lights, people acknowledge and celebrate this commitment to do something for the planet that goes on beyond an hour. By turning the lights off together, people come together as a unified community.

Earth Hour is a symbolic action. Thus, it doesn’t claim to reduce the carbon and energy consumption of the world. It is a simple initiative to encourage people, the industry, and all governments across the globe to take responsibility for their ecological footprint. It encourages the world as a whole to engage in a dialogue that can help provide solutions to the world’s environmental challenges such as global warming and climate change.

Last year, Earth Hour happened on the 31st of March 2012. Its campaign “I Will If You Will” was launched a month prior with its goal of getting the growing global community together to make an effort to coordinate to others using the internet through social-networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Through this campaign, various digital communities were encouraged to inspire other people to make a move to make the world a more sustainable place to live, and to commit a common goal to the environment.

This year, WWF has officially launched with a campaign: Uniting People to Protect the Planet. It will be held on 23rd of March, from 8:30-9:30PM.

People often take it for granted that we only have one home to live in – our planet, Earth. And as much as people love the Earth there is still those things that pose a threat to the environment, things such as pollution, unsustainable farming and reckless living that contribute to climate change. That is why Earth Hour was created to address the issue of climate change and effectively have everyone “join in” in saving the world.

Earth Hour is the planet’s largest, most encompassing environmental campaign that brings the world together in bringing environmental awareness by doing one simple action – turning off the lights. The idea of the campaign came from the international non-government organization World Wide Fund for Nature, commonly known as WWF, which strives to make everything better in the world.

The first ever Earth Hour started in 2007 in Australia where people were invited to show their support for saving the planet and climate change action by turning off their lights for an hour. In its very first campaign to stand up against climate change a stunning 2.2 million people and over 2,000 businesses joined in and turned their lights out – everyone from children, housewives and working dads to politicians, presidents, and CEOs.

A year later it was the whole of Australia that took part in turning off their lights and soon around 35 countries and around 400 cities took part in the effort to support climate change action. Flash-forward to 2012 Earth Hour became the largest environmental campaign ever by having 152 countries and 7,000 cities join in on the switching off their lights.

Because of its success and its impact on the minds of people around the world Earth Hour became more than just a one country environmental campaign and turned into an annual event wherein people are invited to turn off their lights just for one hour on the last Saturday of the month of March.

But Earth Hour is not just about switching off your lights for one solid hour – it’s all about bringing awareness and showing your commitment to create change in the world. Because of the simplicity of the campaign with so profound an impact everyone can join in on participating in Earth Hour.

Why not organize an Earth Hour event in your home, business, company, or neighborhood? The more people involved only means more awareness of climate change and how we can take action against it. You can also your part by using social media as a means for letting people known and inviting them to do their part in that annual hour of no lights.

The Earth is the only home that we have and we owe it to our planet to take care of it. By just switching off the light for one hour, once a year all together we can create change. We can make the commitment to help fight climate change and create a stand to take care of the environment whether it is by recycling, using sustainable materials, or utilizing alternative forms of power – and it all starts by turning off our lights in Earth Hour.