Ideas for Celebrating Earth Hour

On March 28, 2009 at 8:30 pm, tens of millions of people around the world will turn out their lights for one hour — Earth Hour — to demonstrate concern for our living planet and send a loud message to our leaders that they support action on climate change.

Several Ogden Dunes residents have asked for suggestions for things they can specifically do that night. Here are a few ideas for things to do in the dark…by yourself or with others:
1. Enjoy a romantic candlelit dinner with someone special using organic or sustainably grown food items.
2. Invite friends and family over for a "lights-out" party and serve green-themed snacks and drinks—green tea or apple martinis anyone?
3. Turn off the lights and power down the computer and cell phone. Use the quiet time to take a break from a "plugged-in" world by meditating or resting.
4. Take a bubble bath by candlelight.
5. Use the hour for practical tasks that you never seem to have time for. Test essential items in your emergency preparedness kit like flashlights, radios, and cell phones. Change out all your light bulbs to energy-efficient CFLs. Change the batteries in your smoke detectors. Think about how you would evacuate your house in an emergency in the dark.
6. Read a book set in an era without electricity. Marvel that the Romans conquered much of the world without a single cell phone and that Shakespeare wrote masterpieces without a laptop or the Internet.
7. Turn off the computer and write a letter by candlelight the old-fashioned way using pen and paper.
8. Invite friends over to play charades or Scrabble by candlelight.
9. View the night sky via telescope--the reduced "light pollution" may make some stars more visible.
10. Take photos of how you spent Earth Hour and upload them to the Earth Hour pages on Facebook, Myspace and YouTube. Keep it clean please!

Earth Hour is not about how much electricity we can save in one hour. The idea behind Earth Hour is that by working together, each one of us can make a difference on the issue of climate change. By doing something as simple as turning off the lights, we send a visual symbol to the world’s leaders that we are counting on them to work together to find solutions to climate change.