Prime Minister Trudeau encouraged Canadians to turn off the lights for an hour on Saturday night to observe Earth Hour. Of course the haters hated, deriding him for making such a suggestion during a time when the world seems so dark and foreboding.
I'll confess that we didn't observe Earth Hour for what we figure is the first time since it's inception in 2007. I was in one room with a single light on, reading a book, while Ruth was in another, watching TV. Honestly, we felt quite pared down in terms of energy use, and we may need those candles at some point!
When Earth Hour began I was serving a congregation with lots of young families, so we made it a fun communal project. Lots of our members participated in different ways, and some actually shut down the power for everything in their home for the hour, commenting later on the silence when appliances and furnace weren't humming away. We framed the event as both a tangible and symbolic expression of Christian concern for Creation.
Back then there was lots of excitement around the globe as major landmarks went dark and satellite images showed us that cities dimmed. It was a tangible way to be mindful of not only reduced energy use, but the realities of climate change which, sadly, have become even more acute since then.
While our collective will may not have been inclined toward Earth Hour in the midst of a frightening pandemic its interesting that the evidence is in that air pollution dropped dramatically in China during the shutdown, and that other countries are registering the same. There has also been a significant reduction in the use of fossil fuels as vehicular traffic has declined.
What will we learn from all of this? I certainly wouldn't make any bold predictions about "seeing the light" -- or would that be the dark? -- and God knows our global data use has probably soared. We shouldn't give up on the legacy and value of Earth Hour just yet.
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