Lights out celebrating Earth Hour 2008.

One evening at the end of March, 2007, 2.2 million people and 2,100 businesses in Sydney, Australia turned off their lights for one hour. It was called Earth Hour and it reduced the city’s energy consumption by 10.2 percent for one hour, which is the equivalent effect of taking 48,000 cars off the road for one hour. (See article in Natural Life, March/April, 2007.)
Earth Hour used the simple action of turning off the lights for one hour to deliver a powerful message about the need for action on global warming. With Sydney icons like the Harbour Bridge and Opera House turning their lights off and unique events such as weddings by candlelight, the world took notice.
Inspired by this collective effort, many other major global cities are turning a symbolic event into a global movement. So at 8pm on the March, 29, 2008 millions of people in some of the world’s major cities, including Copenhagen, Toronto, Chicago, Melbourne, Tel Aviv, Manila and Sydney will create a brief wave of darkness spreading around the world by switching off their lights and electrical appliances for the first international Earth Hour. This global initiative has been organized by World Wildlife Fund International. Director General Jim Leape says, “The public has become increasingly alarmed about climate change. They’re seeing it in their daily lives, faster than worse than scientists predicted even a few years ago, and are increasingly impatient to see something done about it. People are ready to take action in their own lives and expecting their governments to take action.”

Sustainable living!

Too much emphasis on green living and environment friendliness through Internet & media has created enough awareness among masses all over the world, that administrations are taking environment friendly decisions and we also see legislation being formed on national and international levels to protect environment.
But in this all going green phobia, a lot of confusion and misunderstanding is also developing, many of us now correlate use of green electricity to sustainability, in fact using energy efficiently is sustainability. Most of us think that using canvas bags instead of plastic is an eco friendly gesture, but caring a cloth bag every time we got to shop is being green.
It’s great that world wide huge cooperates are investing in renewable sources of energy, and production of eco friendly products. But sustainability can only be achieved if humans reduce there consumption level, and a line between needs and luxury will be drawn, when need for waste dumps and land fills wont be an issue. Sustainability is harvesting some amount of our food from our backyards, gardens and balconies, which was not irrigated with community water supply but the rain water we harvested. Sustainability is leaving our car at home and walking to the market, making sure suburbs are not turning into city centers and marine life is not contaminated just for a little luxury of no significance.
Giant steps taken by governments and Ngo’s can’t make much of a difference unless Little green steps are taken on individual level.