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Let there be dark: O.C., L.A. kill lights in global-warming event
March 26th, 2009, 3:28 pm · 29 Comments · posted by Pat Brennan, science, environment editor
Orange County’s Sawdust Art Festival, the Westin hotel at South Coast Plaza and other local landmarks will go dark Saturday night for “Earth Hour,” a worldwide event meant to call attention to global warming as well as how to fight it. 
The World Wildlife Fund came up with the idea: asking businesses, government, organizations and residents to switch off the lights between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., whatever time zone they’re in.
“You can think of turning off the lights as casting a vote for our elected officials – no matter where you live – for them to take immediate action to combat the crisis we’re facing,” said Earth Hour spokesman Dan Forman.
By Thursday, several Orange County businesses and other organizations had signed up to participate on the group’s Web site for the event. (Photo of Santa Monica ferris wheel by Karen Somers, courtesy World Wildlife Fund.)
“Most of us are not always cognizant of all the things that we have plugged in,” said Doug Farquhar, in charge of business development at an Irvine firm, Buygreen.com, that is taking part. “It’s just a good sort of reminder that thee are little things we can do to make a little bit of a difference.”
At the Westin, three of the 14 floors will go dark, guests will be encouraged to turn off their lights and candles will be deployed.
“There’s a lot of candlelight in the hotel; it’s part of the ambiance anyway,” said spokesman Dan Pittman. “But there will be more because of the need to make it darker in there.”
The region’s host for the event in Southern California is L.A. Live, an entertainment “campus” near Staples Center. And when the lights cut out, some dramatic landmarks will go dark: The ferris wheel at the Santa Monica pier, Griffith Park Observatory, the Getty Center, the Capitol Records tower, the Vincent Thomas Bridge.
Some 75 area restaurants will serve dinner by candlelight, organizers said.
Worldwide, it will be lights out for yet more dramatic landmarks, including the Acropolis in Greece and the Egyptian pyramids, as well as the Sydney Opera House in Australia and buildings in Dubai, Kuwait, even Nairobi.
The World Wildlife Fund started Earth Hour three years ago in Australia, and since then, it’s gone global.
While wasteful use of energy is often cited as a source of greenhouse gas emissions that could intensify climate change, dimming the lights for an hour won’t make much of a dent in the world’s energy use, Forman said; it’s more of a symbolic gesture.
But in three years, the event has grown exponentially. Last year, the first time the event went “global,” Forman said 400 cities in 35 countries participated, an estimated 50 million people.
This year, he said, people in nearly 2,900 cities in 84 countries have signed up so far.
“It’s a huge jump,” he said. And while no one knows how many people will take part this year, the figure could be huge.
“We hope to have nearly a billion people participating,” he said.
Safety is a major part of the event, he said; the group works with cities, police and fire officials, as well as power companies, and the call for lights out does not include emergency lighting.
About 10 Orange County businesses and organizations appeared on the group’s Web site Thursday, including the Sawdust, Fairmont Newport Beach and Fitz Intermediate School in Santa Ana.
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I believe I’ll be turning on all my lights, idling my SUV, and leaving the refrigerator door open during that time. It may raise my electricity bill, but hey — every person’s gotta do their part, right?
It’s sad that the so called main stream media refuses to report all the scientists that refuse to cow tow to the political science called man made climate change. Notice how the so called main stream media stopped calling it man made, just like illegal aliens are called immigrants.
Climate change is real and a natural process. Not a political game.
I say we keep the lights off permanently. There’s way too much light pollution as it is. When was the last time you REALLY saw the night sky around here?
I think that tomorrow night at around 9pm, I’ll take a drive throughout the county and enjoy all the lights that are still on.
We must return to nature! Do not use electricity! Burn fires instead so that you can see in the dark. May the smoke from our 6 billion torches rise as into the stratosphere as a tribute to our Earth Mother!
I’ll be at the Elton John/Billy Joel concert, so I really don’t care.
It’s important to do your part people to save our envirnoment. Tune out tomorrow… go throw a Hootenanny at the local park instead of sitting in front of the TV.
Peace love and respect!!
It will be interesting to note the crime uptick during this period throughout the country. Imagining that anyone actually does it.
yeah I will be turning on all my lights as well…I think I will even plug in my flood lights and start up my boat and idle my SUV. Go green some where else and please please all you little prius drivers put the pedal to the metal because entering on to a freeway doing 35 MPH and then doing 60 MPH once your on is going to get you killed…buy a real car!
If this interferes with my drinking, I’m going to be upset.
What is pathetic is that people value symbolism over reality. Read my lips, there is no such thing as Global Warming. And I have as much of a background as Al Gore…got myself a D in Science in high school. However, I earned an A in common sense. Follow the money and you will follow the truth. As for me, if I think about this trivial nonsense tomorrow night, I will turn on all my appliances and lights during this time period. Call me a skeptic or a denier but do not call me tomorrow night because that will waste energy and we will all be dead on Sunday or 2100 or 3100 or whenever the world is going to end because I left my lights on. As the man says in the commercial: We’ll leave the light on for you”
I can just see everyone going dark and at 9:30 everyone turn everything back on and the power grid overloads and blows up
Then we will all be in the dark for weeks!
Except Al Gore and Finestine they will not turn their lights off and when the system blows up they will use their tax payer supplied generators
I will go green
Drink green beer!
Geez Tax Payer, you got me thinkin about what Al Gore and Finstein might do together in a power outage. Ewww!!
Love this global warming junk…flooding in the midwest…ice caps growing…im sick of the pc junk!!!!!
All you global warming people should thank me for eating a fat burger tomorrow night, as i stopped another cow from farting more methane gas….oh yeah, lights will be on!
Thank you David. A little common sense goes a long way. As for me, I can’t see in the dark and candles are dangerous so…. Besides, the NCAA tournament is on TV.
Will have to run my appliances, and if I had
a plugin car, I’d be charging it. Might shine
some lasers in the air for the satellites to
see.
Carbon-hysteria is anti-human, anti-progress.
I would gladly help turn any politicians
into biodiesel.
Didn’t Ayn Rand predict this?
I won’t be home, but I’ll be sure to turn all my lights on before I leave. These politicians are a joke. The fact that they think this is important is pathetic.
Hey Sue; I’ll be at the concert tomorrow night too. Should be a good one.
The only realistic thing we can do to fight global warming is to adopt nuclear power on a large scale. It is zero emissions. All the other green technologies like solar power and wind are jokes in comparison, they produce so little compared to nuclear. Let’s stop wasting time and adopt a real solution.
Global warming is the new religion and proponents are getting wealthy off of this “religion”. What happened to the new Ice Age and global cooling caused by, you guessed it! Humans.
It could be worse I suppose. Most of the cults have faded and a spaceship behind a comet is not coming to “save” the “righteous believers” from calamity. Each generation has their “hucksters” (prophets), come 10 years, I wonder what the next natural disaster religion will be.
Ever hear of the natural cycles of the planet?
Is it really going to make a difference whether the lights are on or off?
What a bunch of crap. Oooooooooooooo………..global warming…………..doggone, it’s getting hot! Oh wait………..I’m freezing……….gotta’ turn up the heat. Oh wait…….I’m gonna get a Prius because it gets 4 mpg LESS than my Mercedes……………..ohhhh, but will I be GREEN? No, I won’t……..but my neighbors will be.
Solution to what? A Hoax?
“Most of the cults have faded”
- X-DEM:
The largest two cults have been absorbing all the smaller ones.
“No – it’s a waste of time”?
How about:
“No – encouraging our leaders to take immediate action will exacerbate our current economic crisis, which could spark worse crises, like mass/chronic unemployment or world war, and make us long for the day when our only concern was the manufactured fear of global warming.”
If I do this for an hour can I go buy the big screen tv since we “saved” so much energy there will be no need to the ban on them????
Darn, I just went outside at 10:20 and the climate was still changing. Oh well,maybe next year.