The lights did go out in France and Spain
I’m sure most of you never heard about this, but French environmentalists began a campaign earlier this year encouraging citizens around the world to switch off their lights for five minutes on February 1 at 7:55 p.m. (GMT), or 1:55 p.m. Toronto time. The event was timed to coincide with a meeting in Paris where the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest, and to date most disturbing, climate change report. The hope was that the viral nature of the Internet would get citizens around the globe to participate, and if enough did, it would send a strong message to government leaders about public concern over global warming. Well, just for fun, I asked Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator if they registered any strange changes on the grid during that five-minute period. The answer was: No.
However, they did tell me that there was an impact in France and Spain. By simply turning off the lights, citizens in France reduced power in the country by 800 megawatts, while Spain measured a 1,000-megawatt reduction. Not bad when you consider how little electricity comes from residential lighting.
So what does this say about North America? You could say that culturally, such protests aren’t our style. Then again, given the time zone changes, there’s not a lot of people at home at 1:55 p.m., whereas at 7:55 p.m. in France you can have a bigger impact. So maybe North Americans aren’t apathetic — we just weren’t home.
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
February 5th, 2007 at 11:48 pm
Hey Tyler,
I actually did participate in this event by shutting turning off my heater, lights, fridge.. and well thats about it since I live in a condo.. oh.. and I unplugged my laptop for good measure
The funny thing is, that I tend to keep on top of things and didn’t hear anything about it over here (In Toronto) – until that is, I signed up for Facebook.com . It seems that some of these new global online networks are having a fairly big impact – larger then one would think.
The beauty of this site is that you can create special interest groups and events and have them searchable – you can network them to people by word of mouth (they provide the tools – mostly ‘send to a friend’ style). The result?
For “Lights Out” there were 62,430 maybes and 161,539 confirmed participants… not to mention the 13,941 wall posts on the topic. Not bad considering this is the youth of today – and the future of tomorrow.
February 6th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
So to summarize… “The lights are on, but nobody’s home…”
Sounds like a euphemism for Canada’s attempts at addressing global warming to date.
February 8th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
More.. like, the lights are off and no one home.
Don’t get me wrong im all in favor for reductions of fossil fuels, mostly due to smog and health issues.
I think global warming and oil shortages are more of a red herring and political, then reality. What if I was to say to you, there’s more oil today then any other time in our history?. Im sure you would want to run me out of your website.
Well let me explain, from 1977 we are using less oil (factories and cars are more efficient) and we find more and more around the world. Also better ways of getting it out of the ground, due to technology, thus our over all oil reserves are higher today then ever. Remember the 1970′s the world was coming to an end because we will have no oil by 2000. If we listened to the environmentalists we would be rationing oil by the spoon full and living in an ice age as promised.
February 8th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
Apparently this was well-hyped in Montreal. My daughter phoned from there to remind us (first we heard about it). We shut our lights off at 7:55PM EST. Do you think Hydro would have noticed?
February 9th, 2007 at 10:33 am
That’s pretty funny. Factories and cars more efficient – and we have the same number of each that we did in the 70′s?
“Finding more and more around the world” – where? When was the last major discovery the size of the ones in the 70′s? Yes we’ve got the tar sands and some offshore findings, but what do they cost to get the oil out, and how much will actually be usable? Having more now than in the past doesn’t mean we’ll continue to have more in the future. Faulty logic.
And as you point out, there are better ways of getting it out of the ground – but that means that it just gets used faster than it might have. Which means it doesn’t last as long, because if there’s one thing we’ve proven, it’s that our society will expand to match the resources available. If “our” oil reserves actually are higher today than ever, it’s in part because of warmer weather in the beginning of the season this year. Conserve oil! Encourage global warming!
We may not run out of oil during our lifetimes, but we’re definitely setting the trend. That is, unless the fabled “creamy nougat centre” of oil in the earth actually does exist.