Earth Hour in Toronto: making music in the dark

This past Saturday, I trekked out like many other Torontonians down to Yonge and Dundas Square to take part in the evening's Earth Hour celebration. It was a pretty cool event, with musical performances by R&B artist Jarvis Church, singer-songwriter Justin Nozuka and, to honour the hour and close the show, the amazingly-talented singer/songwriter Chantal Kreviazuk.

There were messages shared by World Wildlife Fund, the Mayor and others of energy saving, taking public transportation and just the simple act of turning off the lights. The whole point: to get us to stop and think about climate change. The question is, did it work?


Around 8 p.m. at Yonge and Dundas Square on March 27, 2010.









Around 8:45 p.m., Yonge and Dundas Square gets dark(er).








Unfortunately, the power dropped less on average this year across the city and the province. The Toronto Star reported a 10 per cent drop in power use in the city between 8:30 and 9:30 p.m. (compared with a 15.1 per cent drop in 2009) while the province experienced an overall 4 per cent drop during the hour (down from 6 per cent in 2009).

All that said, I think the impact Earth Hour had was important and significant. The whole point of getting us to think about climate change, I think, worked. There is obviously still much room to grow, but I am encouraged by this effort and by so many other small acts that took place on this evening. Hopefully this is a beginning of greater "green" changes to come.