Shine bright, turn out lights

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This article was published 26/03/2011 (5509 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Pamela Rezansoff and her family will pull on extra sweaters and scarves tonight, maybe even hats and gloves, at their home outside Grande Prairie, Alta.

“When I get up in the morning, I’ll turn off the furnace unless there’s danger the pipes will freeze,” Rezansoff says. “I’ll turn off all appliances except the fridge, and we’ll eat fruit, vegetables and sandwiches. In the evening, we’ll play board games by candlelight.”

The Rezansoffs are among the 10 million Canadians, about half of Canada’s adult population, who are expected to turn off their lights between 8:30 and 9:30 p.m. local time to take a stand against climate change.

Earth Hour started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia, when lights went off in 2.2 million homes and more than 2,000 businesses to raise consciousness about global warming. Since then, the event’s gone global, with more than 50 million people participating in 35 countries in 2008, and landmarks such as Toronto’s CN Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and the Colosseum in Rome standing in darkness. In 2009, participation hit the one-billion mark across 88 countries. And last year 1.3 billion people in 128 countries showed their concern for the planet by turning off their lights and holding candlelight vigils.

This year, World Wildlife Fund, the event’s organizer, expects the numbers of Canadians to equal, if not surpass, those who participated in 2010, judging by the pledges being posted at www.earthhourcanada.org.

In Squamish, B.C., Ana Santos is organizing an evening at the Howe Sound Inn & Brewery today that will start with a screening of the documentary Aftermath: A World Without Oil, followed by a candlelight dinner featuring local foods and an evening of music.

In Toronto, Barry and Joyce Twohig and their friends will turn out for the downtown open-air Earth Hour concert, as they’ve done for the past two years.

“This is one of the few happy campaigns of the environmental movement, not a protest,” says Zoe Caron, WWF-Canada’s Toronto-based climate policy and advocacy specialist. “One hour doesn’t have a monumental impact on global warming, but it can help change people’s habits.”

But Boyd Cohen, who teaches sustainable entrepreneurship in the MBA program at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, says it’s easy to feel good about something that costs little effort and no ongoing commitment. He calls Earth Hour “green tokenism,” and says it trivializes the challenges our planet faces. “The changes we need to adopt go well beyond turning off your lights for an hour,” says Cohen, co-author with L. Hunter Lovins of the newly published Climate Capitalism, a book that details case studies of how businesses can profit from sustainability.

And Canadians need to adopt changes. According the WWF’s 2010 Living Planet Report, Canadians are among the world’s worst offenders in contributing to an increase in the global ecological footprint. Of the 130 nations measured for the report, Canada has the seventh-largest per capita footprint, more than twice the average global citizen’s consumption rate.

“Consumers should be compelling their local, regional and federal politicians to take action on energy-efficient transportation, phasing out coal-fired power plants and wide-scale adoption of renewable energies that are locally appropriate, including biomass, biofuels, solar and wind energy,” Cohen says.

Failure to ratify an international treaty setting targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to succeed the Kyoto Protocol has disheartened many in the environmental movement, but Caron remains optimistic. She attended the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen where a treaty was widely expected to be adopted, and the next conference in Cancun last December, where she says she was encouraged by increased collaboration. “We got a basis of trust among participants, and it’s possible we’ll get a treaty this year in Durban, or perhaps next year. But important as a treaty is, it’s only a means to an end. There are other means, and one of them is government action. And the more local the government, the more effective that seems to be.”

Twohig has turned Earth Hour into a monthly event. In 2009, he created the Facebook page, Earth Hour By The Dozen, which has motivated friends and Facebook visitors to turn down the lights on the fourth Saturday of every month. The Twohigs generally celebrate their monthly Earth Hour for a candlelight meal with friends.

Inspired by their Earth Hour initiatives, they’re now living a more sustainable lifestyle. Twohig says he has switched to green electricity provided by an alternative energy producer, and he shops in a Toronto store that carries organic food. “It’s a little more expensive,” he says, “but those who can afford to should support these businesses.”

— Postmedia News