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Earth Hour is all about showing the world — and our political leaders — that we’re ready to take on climate change. When we all shut off the lights, not only do we have that absence-of-light show for the world to see, there’s also the drop in energy usage the utilities see. With that latter item in mind, here’s a few things I’ll try to avoid doing during Earth Hour (this Saturday, March 27 at 8:30 PM).

- Doing laundry. Even though I have a very efficient laundry machine, I’ll just deal with the fact that my whites won’t get whiter during Earth Hour. Who cares, it’ll be dark anyway!
- Opening the fridge a lot, or using its icemaker. A newer-model fridge will use about 42 Kilowatt hours of power per month, according to this handy calculator. Fridges are one of the top energy consumers in most homes, simply because they’re on all the time. Plus every time you open the door, all the cool air falls out onto the floor, and the fridge has to work hard to maintain the cool temperature you’ve set.
- Taking a shower. Sure, there’s nothing like a shower in the dark to get those creative wheels turning. But if you have an electric hot-water heater, even an on-demand model, you’ll be using a lot of power to bring your municipal water supply up from about two degrees (Toronto’s average) to whatever steamy temp you prefer.
- Cranking the heat. Instead of making the furnace work harder, reach for a cozy blanket to keep you warm during Earth Hour. Or a friend. This hour is about climate change, so heating counts, even if you’re on gas or you use a fireplace.
- Having fun. Kidding! So avoiding all the things above may not be practical for the full hour. But hopefully we can keep our energy use low for sixty whole minutes, and show that we can reduce.

For ideas on how to have fun during Earth Hour (some silly, I admit) see yesterday’s post.

We’re four days away from Earth Hour — it’s this Saturday, March 27 from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. Do you know what you’re going to do yet? OK, we’re all going to turn out the lights. Then what? Activities for adoring love birds aside, what fun things can you do in the dark? Here are a few ideas.

- Have a local wine and cheese party by LED lantern or flashlight. You could even charge outdoor solar lanterns or light strings outside during the day, then bring them in to light up the party in the evening.

- Play a little game I’ll call “Watts Up?” If you have a power monitor, you could move around the house with a flashlight, guessing the power usage (”draw”) of various things you have plugged in. Test them with a power monitor to see how much the electronics, appliances and so forth actually draw. I’d recommend “Price is Right” rules: the closest without going over wins! Bonus points for unplugging everything as you go!

- Take some memorable photos. Get sparklers for your friends together and get them to write “2010″ or “Earth” or whatever turns your crank for the camera.

- Take your friends star gazing – and supply the hot chocolate. Here’s a Homemakers recipe for White Hot Chocolate.

Of course, I’m not planning to do any of these things — after enjoying a nice meal with my family, we’ll head to City Hall to watch the lights going off. (Although they might appreciate some of that hot chocolate!) What are you planning to do for Earth Hour?

Earth Hour is one of the most fun events of the year, in my books anyway. Everyone’s itching to get out of the house in spring, and what’s more fun than to walk through the streets of your town when everyone’s out to see the spectacle. While a light bulb that makes light out of dark can seem like a miracle thing, somehow, to me, seeing a whole bunch of lights go out at once, in the spirit of environmentalism, is the big miracle.

Earth Hour is next Saturday, March 27 at 8:30 PM. My parents are coming to town, and I’m looking forward to walking the city with them as everyone comes together to create a big non-light show across the Toronto. It’s great to see all kinds of light sources flicked off — in office towers, apartments, shop signs and window displays, in public spaces, schools, little houses and more. An LED flashlight (powered by rechargeable batteries) is the evening’s must-have accessory!

After the event, I’ll be eager to see how much we reduced our power consumption. The dramatic numbers of previous years show that we’re willing to conserve, all we need is a little incentive… or a special event. Here’s my post about last year’s results.

What are you planning to do for Earth Hour?

Earth Hour ended up being a lot of fun. My folks and my partner and I went for a late afternoon walk in the woods. The Thousand Islands area is on the Canadian Shield. Meandering through the woods means making your way over tumbled chunks of rock covered in colourful lichens, surrounded by thick, spongy mosses, strewn with fragrant pine needles. Unfortunately, where my folks live, there is an out-of-control deer population, so one must steer clear of little round droppings everywhere.

After our walk, we prepped dinner on the barbecue and chopped up a salad. It’s pretty hard to eat locally in Ontario at this time of year – the winter stores have just about run out and nothing’s in the ground yet to harvest. But at least by cooking off the grid we minimized our power usage on Earth Hour night!

Dinner prep ticked into the final minutes leading up to Earth Hour, but we soon flicked off the last couple of lights and lit some candles. And then we started thinking of things that might be drawing power around the house! Before long, flashlights in hand, people were dispatched to unplug the DVD player and TV, and anything else potentially drawing power. It was a good exercise in thinking about all of the electronics and appliances that steal away a little power all the time.

I think the candlelight made for great dinner conversation. With the gentle candlelight flickering across our faces, illuminating the area around us and not much more, it’s no surprise we were focused on one another, and the lights were out well after Earth Hour was officially over.

Back in Toronto, I was thrilled to see everyone’s evident interest in Earth Hour — a 15 per cent power reduction, about double last year’s achievement. Congratulations, everybody! Here’s a video of Earth Hour’s lights out around the world.

What did you do for Earth Hour?

I was thinking about Earth Hour on the way home from work last night. It was around 7:30 p.m. and, as usual, lights were on in closed shops, office towers and picture windows everywhere. I thought a little about the benefits of having a darker night. Here are a few; let me know if you can think of others.

1. Fewer birds will die. I know that Toronto’s mayor, David Miller, encourages office towers to turn off the lights at night with the Lights Out program. The problem: When lights are on in a building, birds see the rooms inside as open spaces to fly into. Since many bird populations are in serious decline, it would be great if we could help more of them survive. Here’s a Homemakers story on building birdhouses for native songbirds.

2. You can get a better night’s sleep. Ambient light from street lights and other sources keeps us from sleeping deeply. In our new house, my partner and I use blackout cloth behind our bedroom curtains to block out the street light’s orange glow.

3. Star gazing. I used to have a great piece of software called MPj Astro. Fabulous for the mid ’90s, it would show you the night sky for your location, in whatever direction you wanted to look, and label whatever you liked. These days I could really only use it to find out what’s there, behind a wall of light. But I think I’ll see if I can find it and load it on my machine before Earth Hour — a window of an opportunity to try it out again.

What other fringe benefits are you expecting from Earth Hour?

I’m getting really excited about all of the lights out statements happening around the world for Earth Hour (this Saturday night at 8:30, whatever your time zone). Positioned as an opportunity to tell global leaders that people want to tackle climate change, I think that, with some of the major statements planned, this will be a landmark year. Lights are going out on the Sphinx and Great Pyramids of Giza, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Eiffel Tower, the Sydney Opera House, the Acropolis in Greece, the CN Tower — even the Las Vegas strip!

While reading up about the event, I’ve found out about a few related contests:

World Wildlife Federation, which runs Earth Hour, is offering a chance to win a trip for two to visit the polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba. To enter, just register with their Earth Hour site.

For Toronto dwellers, there’s the “How Low Can We Go, T.O.?” contest, a chance to win an “Earth Hour Conservation Pack.”

Canon Canada’s Nurture Nature Awards are open for entries starting on Earth Hour. Just submit a proposal consisting of a short video and a brief written plan on how you intend to positively impact a threatened habitat in your area. Each winner gets a cash award of $20,000 to fund their project, as well as a Canon digital SLR camera and a Canon video camera so they can document their progress and the final results of their project. The contest closes on Sept. 1, 2009.

Last year on Earth Hour night, my partner and I met a friend down on Toronto’s Queen St. The three of us checked out city hall at Queen and Bay (dimmed as promised – neat but not as fun as the night we played games on its windows during Nuit Blanche), gaped at the shadow of the CN tower (usually lit up in blues, purples and pinks these days) and generally grinned at other people on the street. The fact that most people were out to see how different Toronto could look that night was neat in itself, like we were all sharing something.

And as we walked West down toward Spadina Ave., most storefronts were completely dark, even though Earth Hour itself was long over. Where they would usually spotlight the latest and greatest for window shoppers’ benefit, most places, particularly the independents, were blacked out. A few stores seemed oblivious to the night’s event, however, and blazed against the dark night so brightly I wondered if they were capitalizing on the opportunity to stand out.

We were headed to a concert at the Horseshoe, and after Luke Doucet got his guitar wound up on a few opening songs, he made a comment about the multinational clothing company across the street with its lights on in full force. The crowd made it clear what they thought of the store’s light show with a round of booing. Now there we all were, inside a bar with the lights, the sound system and the beer fridges running full steam, but the booing felt justified: the clothing store wasn’t being a good sport.

Later I wondered if that store, and others still lit up down the street, even knew how to turn off their display lighting. Odds were that the lights were on timers that the employees didn’t even know how to interrupt. And I thought that that’s sort of the trouble with the way we use energy: it’s been so cheap for so long, it’s made more sense just to put things on automatic, leave things running than make daily decisions about what’s on and off.

In our offices here at Homemakers, the lights are either on or off across the entire floor, with the exception of some of the offices and boardrooms. While I’m glad that the lights all go off on a timer in the evening, I’m sure there are ways to make it more efficient, say, on a sunny afternoon when you don’t need the lights on, or a late night at work where you’re the only one there.

Does your office have power-saving programs or practices? Has your building made any changes to save energy?

Earth Hour is this Saturday night at 8:30 p.m., no matter what time zone you live in. It’s a global energy-saving party – last year, according to WWF, than 50 million people in 35 countries took part. Canadians really embraced this event, even though it started as something for Sydney, Australia. I think that last year, our politicians were surprised at the number of people who got involved in Earth Hour, and that let them know that with a few incentives, we can be more efficient.

The neat thing about Earth Hour is it’s an opportunity to try out an “R” that we often skip over, in my opinion. How much can we reduce? If Earth Hour is our one in 8,760 hours a year to show our village, town, city, province, country, world that we can reduce the power we use, and that we want to reign in our consumption, then let’s see just how much of a difference we can make!

I’m not saying that I’ll let my ice cream thaw by turning off all the power at the panel. Although that could be interesting. (Hey, we’ve all survived power outages, right?)

But beyond turning out the lights for an hour, why not turn off computers, flip off power bars, turn down the thermostat, and forego running dishwashers, microwaves, hair dryers and other appliances (even if they’re really really efficient)?

Do you think Earth Hour is a legitimate chance to send a message? Do you plan to do anything special for Earth Hour this Saturday night? Do you have other energy-saving tips?

Financial troubles have downplayed our climate crisis, but saving energy obviously pays off on both fronts. Let’s see how far Canada will take it this year!