Earth Hour 2010 - Vote for Earth

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Earth Hour is a WWF initiative which sends across an inspiring message of hope and action for Climate Change. At 8.30pm on 27th March 2010, cities, towns and municipalities across the world will turn off their lights for one hour – Earth Hour – sending a powerful global message that it’s possible to take action on global warming.

Earth Hour 2010

On Earth Hour millions of people around the world come together to call for action on climate change by doing something quite simple—turning off their lights for one hour. 

Earth Hour is a WWF initiative which sends across an inspiring message of hope and action for Climate Change. At 8.30pm on 27^th March 2010, cities, towns and municipalities across the world will turn off their lights for one hour – Earth Hour – sending a powerful global message that it’s possible to take action on global warming. 

Earth Hour began in Sydney, Australia, where more than 2.2 million households and turned off their lights for one hour. Just a year later, Earth Hour reached 370 cities and towns in more than 35 countries across 18 time zones, and the campaign shifted from a ‘Sydney Event’ to a ‘Global Sustainability Movement’. International landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, Rome’s Coliseum, the Coke billboard in Times Square and Jumeirah Hotel in Dubai, switched off for one hour to show their commitment to the cause.   

Earth Hour 2009

In 2009, India joined the Earth Hour movement.  Over 5 million Indians and 56 Indian cities showed their support by switching off, saving approximately 1000 MW of power in that one hour and making the first ever Earth Hour in India a huge success!

Earth Hour also received unprecedented media coverage with over 100 stories that were filed the next morning.  Aamir Khan, the nation's popular youth icon was the Brand Ambassador for Earth Hour 2009.Also several celebrities associated themselves with the campaign including cricketers Sachin Tendulkar and Anil Kumble. 

From amongst those who switched off included 

• Several key historic and landmark buildings like Qutub Minar, Red Fort, Humanyun’s Tomb and Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus.
• Symbols of modern India including hotels, cinema complexes and shopping malls 
• Connaught Place in Delhi and Brigade Road in Bangalore offered a unique visual spectacle with just the essential lights turned on.
• 100 top public and private sector organizations participated. Reserve Bank of India, Infosys, Wipro, ICICI, Google, Indian Hotels, HSBC, Standard Chartered India, HP, ITCWelcomgroup, HUDCO, Taj group of hotels and PVR. to name a few
• Tremendous support from the Government of Delhi ( has adopted EH as a quarterly initiative)
• Hundreds of educational institutions including IITs, IIMs, MICA, Jamia Milia Islamia, JNU among several youth groups, community organizations and religious groups took ownership of the campaign to help make it a success from Cochin to Gangtok and Dehradun to Bubhneshwar.
  

Earth Hour 2010

Earth Hour 2010 continues to be a global call to action to every individual, every business and every community. A call to stand up, to show leadership and be responsible for our future.

In what we hope will be the world’s largest mass participation event, Earth Hour 2010 will be the culmination of over one billion people around the globe, in more than 6000 cities, towns turning off lights for one hour on one night. Iconic buildings and landmarks across Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and The Americas will go dark. 

In India, we hope to make Earth Hour 2010 even bigger and better than last year. Besides Delhi & Mumbai , this year we are taking Earth Hour to Pune, Ahmedabad,  Hyderabad, Bangaluru, Chennai and  Kolkata, apart from several other cities where people will be encouraged to participate and turn-off the lights in their homes, offices and buildings  from 8:30pm-9:30pm on Saturday, 27 March 2010. Our participation will go a long way in showing to the world that India is united on its stand against global warming and is demanding immediate action. 

We want to let the world leaders know that the world is still watching, post the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen in 2009 and that we, the citizens of the planet, demand commitment to actions that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the benefit of the planet.  

Climate change and Earth Hour: What is the connection? 
 

What is climate change?  

Climate Change is a phenomenon which takes place when green house gases (the most common amongst which is CO2) that are released into the atmosphere, form a layer preventing the heat from the earth’s surface to be reflected back to the sun. This phenomenon popularly known as the ‘greenhouse effect’ causes the earth’s temperature to rise, giving way to many potentially catastrophic changes in weather patterns, oceanic currents, rainfall patterns etc. 
 

Who is responsible for releasing these green house gases? 
 

There are essentially five greenhouse gases that are most commonly observed in the atmosphere. These include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, water vapor and cfc’s. The sectors responsible for the emissions of these gases can be informally divided into the: the power sector, industrial sector, transport sector and household sector.  

How does the power sector contribute to the release of co2 in the atmosphere? 

From amongst all these sectors the power sector contributes 50% of India’s carbon emissions. In India, coal fired power plants dominate the power generation capacity. This makes the power sector extremely pollution intensive since coal as a source of energy has a very high global warming potential. In India 53% of the installed capacity and 70-80% of generation of power is from coal fired power plants The share of renewable sources of energy in the power sector such as wind, solar, geothermal etc comprises only a mere 7.7%. These sources of energy are not only renewable but also clean. 
 

How can the power sector reduce its co2 emissions? 

Thus the need of the hour is to look at ways which can help in the mitigation of, and adaptation to climate change. From amongst the mitigation options available to a country 

• Shift to low carbon sources of energy: One option for mitigation is to shift dependence away from fossil fuel ( coal, oil and natural gas) based power generation towards generating power through renewable and cleaner sources of energy such as wind, solar, geothermal etc. However this shift is expensive because the technology is not readily available or extremely costly to purchase and therefore cannot be implemented in the short term without adequate financial and technical assistance from the developed world.

• Become more efficient in your use of energy: That is, to use less energy to provide the same level of energy services, for example, by using energy efficient appliances or investing in insulation to prevent heat loss in buildings thus reducing the energy used for heating.

• Adopt an energy saving attitude: Use energy only when it is absolutely essential and not be wasteful in its use. This is the messaging of the Earth Hour, an initiative that hopes to instill behavioral change in the energy consuming attitude of people by asking them to use their power efficiently and switch off the non essential lights and other energy consumer devices when not in use.

Author: Mayank Shah | Published Feb 25, 2010 | 09:10 PM