Earth Hour

http://www.earthhour.org

Do you fancy an atmospheric, candle-lit night in? Well, here's a great reason to have one.

Earth Hour has been running for several years now, and is supported by WWF, the World Wildlife Fund. The idea is to switch off your lights for one hour, starting at 8.30pm on 31 March. This has three purposes:

 1. It's a fun way to save energy and money.
 2. It's a good reminder of how reliant we are on energy, and what things might be like if we were without it.
 3. It's also a good time to reflect on our own energy use, and how it might affect the environment.

In our house, we joined in last time by having candlelit snacks and a few board games. However, ours was the only house in the street with the lights off. I'm glad to see that this could radically change this year, as WWF are predicting that hundreds of millions of people around the world will be involved. All will be switching off their lights at 8.30pm local time, creating a kind of ripple across the globe.

I've already seen posters in the local community (with the title "60+ : Go beyond the hour"). The WWF have also scored a coup by signing up many famous landmarks, from the Eiffel Tower in France to Sydney Opera House in Australia. It looks like this year could be a big one!

The WWF have a site explaining more about the campaign here: http://www.earthhour.org , and there's a UK-specific site here: http://earthhour.wwf.org.uk .