I was totally embarrassed on Saturday night when, with a bunch of friends on a rooftop of a building, we realized that Torontonians were giving the big middle finger #5 to this Earth Hour event…
We all gathered at the Mailman’s apartment and went to his rooftop deck overlooking Dundas Square a little before 8pm. Then slowly the lights started going off in the Square (to the relief of all tenants who have been blinded at night by the constant attack of flashing lights for the last few years now), then the big banks started going dark, then, nothing… almost like people didn’t know what was going on, almost like it hadn’t been on the news for the last while, on the papers, on the internet… See, a little before that, while watching the news at 6pm, we saw Sydney and Singapore go dark and I guess I was expecting the same here… nope.
Biggest offenders? The Federal Gov’t building downtown with ALL its lights on… The major hotels with all their signs on (except for the Sheraton on Queen St which is facing City Hall and would have been embarrassed to receive a call from the mayor who was celebrating with Nelly Furtado at Nathan Philip Square). Ryerson University with all their lights on, not that there was any classes going on…oh wait, I’m lying, at 8:45 their sign finally went off at the corner of Dundas and Dalhousie, but not the lights inside the building. And can someone explain why the baseball field lights at Moss Park had to be on, it’s not like they were in the middle of a game… but then again, before they were on full blast like this, low-lives used to shoot each other there… yeah… leave those on, we sleep better at night without the gun show.
I must admit that even with the lack of participation in the city, it was still nice for that period of time to see the stars in the sky, it’s not often we can do that here. Last time was with the big blackout of 2003.
And then at 9pm, the square started brightening again, one by one the signs lit up… almost on cue. Here and there, other buildings lighted their logos on top of their buildings too, and it was over. Except for the big banks who didn’t turn their lights on right away, I guess they saw another reason for profit by saving on the electric bill for another hour or so.
And before someone calls me hypocrite for not turning on our permanent lights in our kitchen, I’ll just defend myself by saying that the last time there were off, I found someone breaking into the apartment… those lights stay on regardless of Earth Hour or not… sorry Environment.
Here are some pictures DR took from his iPhone:
At 8:01PM
At 8:30PM
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At least you had partial participation.
My suburban sprawl has no clue about anything good for the environment; unless it’s making the place look better by restoring a ’68 Chevelle to sit in the driveway.
Personally, I’m thrilled that T.O. didn’t turn off their lights. It shows there’s some hope for us after all. It shows we’re not all so easily programmed into doing something just because some mankind-hating intellectuals and we-will-rule-the world-type environmentalists say we should. Why should we all want to go back to the dark ages anyway, even if only for an hour. Shark boy seems to want everyone in the world to turn off their lights so we can all be subjected to the hellish life on earth that exists for us without the incredible life saving and life enhancing gift of electicity. Shark boy wants us all to turn our whole lives into his dark kitchen, where mayhem rules. If anything, we should all turn on ALL our lights in celebration of human civilization and in defiance of the dark forces out there that want us all to be unthinking automotons so they can rules us. And besides, using as much energy as we can is the only way to advance out of the polluting systems we have now and make cleaner types of energy more economically viable. If there’s no demand for more energy, there’s no one who’s going to waste their life developing a better way that no one wants to pay for. THAT’s the lesson we can learn from this.
DBell
Sounds like the response was better than in London, from what I could see. At least it was a noticeable difference.
And re: the guy above: WTF? It’s a symbolic gesture. Nobody claims it will plunge the world into the dark ages. If even one person remembers to turn the lights off when they’re not using them from now on, or a few more people devote some time or money to developing cleaner sources of energy, because of Earth Day, then it’s worth the negligible inconvenience that many people voluntarily suffered. I don’t see how it’s a bad thing unless you openly endorse wasting energy for the sake of wasting energy.
Truly it’s a symbolic gesture. The media played it up like some second coming (the Star had every first page of all it’s sections on Saturday dedicated to how Earth Day related to that section – “Travel! In the Dark!”). That was pretty evident with the 3 helicopters and one 680 News Cessna flying about that night, hunting for good “dark” shots.
But there is a seriousness behind the symbolism. Unfortunately Toronto’s inaction, compared to Australia’s or Sinagpore’s event looked like Canada usually does to the rest of the world these days when it comes to conserving natural resources: fat, lazy, pig-like, sitting on top of a lot of burnable trees, meltable ice caps and diggable oil sands.
Nelly Furtado is a cow.
go to picture 5 in the slideshow at http://www.cbc.ca/photogallery/canada/1140
the Centre doesn’t actually have signage on the north side of the Queen tower… I just noticed that recently. The full signage is on the south side of the Queen tower (top)
then go here
http://www.flickr.com/photos/luxography/2372984770