earth hour 2012

it's that time of year again: earth hour 2012.

as part of the social-conscious (or conscience) portion of this blog, i make it a point to promote and engage causes that i think deserve support. one of them is the annual earth hour event.

earth hour began in Australia in 2007 as a positive way of raising awareness for climate change in a way that involved hope as opposed to fear. it involves everyone turning off all power for 1 hour at the same time on the same day of the year as a way of thinking about how to reduce consumption of energy, with the ostensible message of trying to reduce carbon footprint but with an ulterior message of being mindful about the environment. since 2007, the event has spread around the world, and in 2011 encompassed 5,200 cities in 135 countries.

for earth hour 2012, the selected hour is 8:30-9:30pm, and the selected day is Saturday, March 31st. obviously, this means that earth hour will vary by timezone--in fact, as i write this, people on the other side of the international date line will already be finishing the day. but the idea is to create what an observer in space would see as a rolling hour of consciousness coinciding with the rotation of the earth.

of course, most Americans don't know about this event, since only a handful of cities in the U.S. observed the event. which is the reason why i'm taking some time to promote it in this blog. i'm hoping more American cities, and more Americans, take some note of this...it's becoming embarrassing to see the rest of the world exercise a conscience as we seem to insist on thuggishness.

you can learn more about earth hour at the organization's website: http://www.earthhour.org/ 

there's also a promotional video of earth hour 2012 that i think is very well done:
http://youtu.be/FovYv8vf5_E


you can read my posts from earth hour of the past few years:

• earth hour 2011: http://jonathaninthedistance.blogspot.com/2011/03/earth-hour-2011.html 
• earth hour 2010: http://jonathaninthedistance.blogspot.com/2010/03/earth-hour-2010.html 
• earth hour 2009: http://jonathaninthedistance.blogspot.com/2009/03/earth-hour-2009.html

remember everyone: 8:30-9:30pm, Saturday, March 31st, turn off the power wherever you are. if you feel alone, you can visit the earth hour website before and after to get a sense of community. you're not alone.