The Big 4%

After all my going on about glasses of wine, comfies, darkness and peaceful silence, turns out my Earth Hour was quite anti-climactic. I never even made it as far as uncorking the wine (and not for the reason you may be thinking!). You see, Ecopapa decided at the last minute that in protest, he would go out for a beer with a buddy. He felt as many did, that Earth Hour was just a marketing gimmick where politicians blow a whole lot of hot air around, make themselves look good, and at the end of the day, make very few significant changes. While I think that that was a completely valid point and I don't begrudge his opinion (in fact, I partly agreed), I think that raising awareness through this type of event can only be a good thing. So off he went for his beer and I happily settled in for a quiet night. Well, by the time the lights were off and my jammies were on, I decided our bed looked way too inviting. Resistance was futile and by 8:02pm, I was in bed, snug as a bug. By 8:05, I was soundly asleep. How's that for excitement?! I woke up this morning at 6am, quite ironically, to a power outage. It was 8am before our power was restored.

This afternoon I spoke to Thulasi Srikanthan, a reporter with The Ottawa Citizen, and she told me that in Ottawa, between 8 and 9pm last night, there was a reduction in demand for power of almost 4% compared to the night before at the same time. It may not seem like such a large number, but when you think about it, if you add this rate to those of other cities, it's huge. And over time, if this exercise was to be repeated - WOW.

So, all in all, I'd call Earth Hour 2008 a success. Raised awareness, decreased power consumption, and on a much smaller level, a tired mom of triplets getting to catch up on her sleep.