Mayor lauds Earth Hour efforts

BY JENNIFER HOEGG

The Hants Journal

NovaNewsNow.com

On Saturday night, lights in the town of Windsor winked out, but there was no power failure.

Windsor joined more than 150 Canadian municipalities to mark Earth Hour 2008 by asking residents and businesses to switch off non-essential lighting between 8 and 9 p.m. March 29.

Mayor Anna Allen was thrilled with the darkening she saw in her own neighborhood and around town. Residential participation was strong, she said Monday.

Windsor’s business community also participated. “I spoke to 70 businesses personally and they were all really excited about the idea. One restaurant had candlelight dining; one pub had low lighting and acoustic entertainment.”

Additional RCMP officers were on the beat downtown, “making sure our little town was safe,” Allen added.

NSPI spokesperson Margaret Murphy said participation was noticeable across the province. “There was a definite, sustained drop for the entire hour of 8-10 megawatts; the equivalent of switching off 150,000 lightbulbs.”

Murphy suspects Nova Scotians went further than turning out lights and “very likely turned off appliances as well.”

Earth Hour began as a World Wildlife Fund event in Australia last March. This year, it was a global phenomenon. From Sydney’s opera house to Toronto’s CN Tower to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge to Halifax’s Macdonald Bridge, lights on major landmarks were dimmed or turned off.

Some downtown visitors here were hoping to see a more dramatic darkening in Windsor, Allen said. “We’ll have to see how much further we want to go. We’re very pleased with people participating and next year we’ll do it bigger and better.”

A global photo gallery of Earth Hour can be viewed at www.earthhour.org.