Bring the Family

Earth Hour: Did You Join the Conversation?

Posted by Toni | Filed under News, Parenting

Once upon a time, I was a young and idealistic member of a Sierra Club chapter that met for dinner on occasion in northwest suburban Chicago. One night we dined at a terrific Mongolian place where they’d grill your chosen entree on massive, round metal drums; very cool to watch and the food was terrific.

At some point during our meal, the power suddenly went out. Our wonderful and quick-thinking hosts immediately brought candles to every table and lit them, and our dinner conversation resumed where it left off. Our hosts apologized profusely, but we didn’t mind; everything looks great by candlelight, and if I remember correctly, the pace of everything slowed down. We savored our meals just as we savored our company and conversation.

To date, that was one of my most memorable dining experiences.

Last night, my family turned off our lights and joined others in our time zone for Earth Hour, an event that’s been both lauded as raising awareness about conservation and derided for lacking teeth. Color me optimistic as well as pragmatic; I didn’t turn off the lights for an hour and expect to find Al Gore sporting a halo at our door with the keys to our very own flying car that runs on clean-burning children’s laughter.

But I did sense my kids’ excitement at the quasi-spooky idea of spending some family time mostly in the dark. And we had some terrific, meaty conversations about electricity and how much we rely upon it. I wish I’d taken some photos of us that night, but I was trying to focus on not using technology, so I left the camera downstairs with our cell phones, laptop and game systems.

I told the boys how my mom, who grew up in a cold water flat in Chicago in the 1930s and 40s, had ice delivered to her family’s apartment each week. The delivery men would carry the massive blocks of ice using iron tongs, often up several flights of stairs. Today, that job is obsolete in our country; we open our freezer several times a day and never give it a second thought. I wondered what businesses we see every day will be gone a few decades from now, and what new ones might spring up. We wondered if everyone would go to bed at an earlier hour and follow the patterns of sunrise and sunset if we didn’t have electricity. I asked the boys what they’d miss most if electricity disappeared that night (the Wii, hands-down).

I do clearly remember, since it was just last night, that the pace of things in our home slowed down. There was no March Madness blaring from our television. There were no toys banging on the floor of the big bedroom. There was no flicker of the laptop or ringing of phones. There was just us, and we all took the time to savor that.

Earth Hour might not change the world overnight, but it did prompt great conversations with my kids, who are the next to inherit generations of industrial progress, some of it wonderful (See: me typing this blog entry while you read it from a distant location), some of it not (See: discarded computers, cell phones, and MP3 players taking up more space in our landfills). While I think these issues certainly bear discussion for more than an hour a year, I find it inspiring knowing that so many other households like ours joined the event, and that famous landmarks the world over, from the Eiffel Tower to the Sydney Opera House to the Vatican, also participated.

To learn more about Earth Hour, visit their web site. The point of any event like this is to raise awareness, and I think Earth Hour succeeds in doing just that, as major news outlets covered the story and even people I know who don’t consider themselves particularly “green” were talking about it. Check out these images from the 2009 Earth Hour event to see famous landmarks and regular citizens worldwide participating.

Did you participate in Earth Hour? Why or why not?Do you think you might join the fun next year? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section.

Tags: candlelight, Conservation, conversation, Earth Hour, future, kids, Parenting, WWF

Permalink | Comments (2) | March 29, 2009

2 Responses to “Earth Hour: Did You Join the Conversation?”

1. Tee Says:
   March 30th, 2009 at 8:36 am

   Earth Hour fell on our monthly Social Misfits Supper Club night, so there were about 10 of us around the table by candlelight for an hour. It was fantastic, and it really took the conversation up a notch because we were all hyper-aware of the great company we were in – that we could share that experience and get something out of it. When we flipped the lights back on, it was tempting to say forget it, and keep them off.

2. Toni Says:
   March 30th, 2009 at 8:50 am

   Hi, Tee, and thanks for commenting!

   This is very much like my dinner experience years ago; nobody wanted the evening or the conversation to end because we were completely engaged and savoring the moments there and then. A fantastic more-than-incidental benefit to an event like Earth Hour.

   Sitting in our room together as a family, the boys were so darned cute, all wide-eyed with excitement over sitting around by candlelight. Also nice to do this during a non-scary power outage during a storm.

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