Earth Hour – Turn off the lights

Earth Hour 2009 is a global call to action to every individual, every business and every community. Earth hour is a call to stand up, to take responsibility and to get involved in working towards a sustainable future.  In 2008, 50 million people in 370 cities and towns, in more than 35 countries worldwide switched off their lights for Earth Hour.  Earth Hour 2009 aims to reach more than one billion people in 1000 cities around the world, inviting communities, business and governments to switch off lights for one hour at 8:30pm on Saturday March 28 and sending a powerful global message that we care enough about climate change to take action.

For more information – http://www.earthhour.org/

What can we do for Earth Hour in our community? – here are some ideas how we can get all of Grey Lynn, Ponsonby and Westmere to turn out the lights for an hour on 28^th March.

Earth Hour Ideas

• Star gazing night find someone with a high powered telescope and some knowledge of the constellations and organise a star gazing session
• Contact the power companies to get a measurement of the drop in usage over the hour – we agreed to target a 5% reduction
• Contact all restaurants and bars and ask them to host a candlelit dinner for the hour. Encourage one bar to have an acoustic set on that evening
• Contact all shops and offices and get them to turn off their display lighting for the evening – give each shop willing to do this a poster to put in the window for the night. Contact the Chamber of Commerce and to see if they can email their members
• See if a shop would have a special on candles
• Contact all of the shops that are open at that 9.00 on Saturday and see if they will do a candlelit or solar light hour
• Walk up Mt Eden to see the view of town when the lights go out
• General awareness in the community – articles in local papers ( press release – maybe 2 weeks prior and follow up with ads and emails out to database)
• Arrange for iconic lights to go out – Auckland War Memorial, Bastion Point, all public buildings
• We discussed the idea of the street lights going out. Think it might be a safety issue. Would be good to at least get all the peripheral lighting eg gardens and parks turned off.
• Schools – contact schools and get something in their newsletters
• Check out events calendars and see if anything is on that night that we could get involved with

The good folk in Pt Chev are on to it, if you would rather not stay at home on your own in your dark house.

Coyle Park 8 – 9.30pm Saturday, March 28th – join us to watch the lights go out.

Earth hour 2009 is from 8.30-9.30 on March 28th. To acknowledge the need to take action on Climate Change, people all over the world are encouraged to turn out the lights for one hour… We understand the Sky Tower will go dark, and hope to also see other lights go out. We will meet at the Coyle Park playground. Torches (preferably rechargable!) may be needed to safely navigate the park. Don’t forget to turn out your own lights before you leave home.