By Cynthia Zhang
Amp writer
Last Saturday, from 8:30-9:30, several million people turned off their lights. This was done for Earth Hour, a yearly event taking place on the last Saturday of March to promote environmental awareness. It was, as the dozen or so news stations covering it can attest, a Big Event, with monuments from the Eiffel Tower to the Empire State Building going dark for an hour. Doing this was very impressive, and so were the numbers: Toronto’s energy usage fell by nine percent, Bangkok saved 73 megawatts of energy, Ireland, 150 megawatts. For one hour, citizens from Australia to Africa sat in reverential darkness. Then, at nine-thirty, the lights came back on.
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Tags: conservation, Cynthia Zhang, earth hour, energy, environment