Today is 28th of February 2009 and at 8:30 PM to tonight it will be “Earth Hour”. “Earth Hour” started in Sydney in 2007 and in 2008 it spread throughout the world, and this year in 2009 organisers hope it will reach over 1 billion people in over 1,000 cities! This increased exposure “Earth Hour” has brought about more criticism. It is true that “Earth Hour” in itself may not actually reduce carbon emissions, this is due to the way power stations are run. Most of the power from power stations cannot turn off all of a sudden, nor can they power up all of a sudden, they have to be running at all times, this is called base load power. Base load power is usually provided by a coal or nuclear power plant and it can take days for their output to stabilise. Peak demand power is used when peoples demand goes above the base load and it usually between 2 PM and 8 PM, the rest of the time we only have base load power plants running.

If at 8:30 PM everyone suddenly turns off their lights, we won’t need to run peak power plants but base load power plants will still be operational, they will need to use the energy on something so the power companies decides to turn everyones hot water heating systems on early which are usually done during the night, this is done so that the power is actually getting used and not wasted. So in effect the base load power is still running, we probably wouldn’t be using peak load power at that time so in essence we haven’t saved much (if any) carbon emissions from escaping into the atmosphere

So why does one bother with “Earth Hour”? “Earth Hour” is still important because it raises awareness about climate change it allows citizens to show their governments that they care about climate change and that they want something done about it. It also shows other people how serious everyon else is about climate change, it might even convince them to feel and act the same. That is why tonight at 8:30 PM I shall be turning off our lights.