2 Texans Down Under

Earth Hour is being judged as a great success here for saving a bit of energy and showing worldwide concern for environmental issues, in part because the idea began only a year ago in Sydney when 54 per cent of Sydney folks are said to have switched off their lights.

Last night, Sydney’s Lord Mayor Clover Moore launched her city’s participation by noting that this “inspired idea” has become a world movement whose “immediate success and … swift adoption around the world shows that people are not only alert to the threat of global warming but they’re engaged and they’re ready and willing to act.”

Here in Brisbane, according to the “Courier Mail,” more than 6000 individuals and 800 businesses signed up in advance to turn off lights from 7 to 8 p.m. last night (Brisbane does not observe daylight savings time) and many thousands more folks here took part.

Along with 190 buildings and more than 100 neon signs registered to switch off, reporter Daryl Passmore said, key Brisbane landmarks that went dark for an hour included the Gateway, Story, Victoria and William Jolly bridges, Conrad International Treasury Casino, City Hall, Castlemaine Fourex Brewery in Milton, Waterfront Place and the Suncorp building’s highly visible downtown clock.

We didn’t see any of that, of course, because we were home, reading in bed with flashlights.

Sydney’s Harbour Bridge and Opera House were among the many iconic structures in the major cities of Australia that turned off lights. News reports here indicate that 26 cities around the world registered as official partner cities in the event, including Atlanta, Chicago, Phoenix, and San Francisco.

Scientists at an Australian base in Antarctica claim, probably without challenge, to have been the most remote Earth Hour participants. Sadly, reports from there just last week indicated, a 1000-year-old ice shelf covering 415 square kilometers (160 square miles) suddenly collapsed.

Meanwhile, though, only 10 per cent of Australians have signed up to get their electricity from green-power sources. We probably wouldn’t have either, except for the opportunity provided by a door-to-door sales person offering us cheaper electricity.

Instead, we chose slightly more costly green power, which we had also done in Oklahoma years ago. There, our green-power rates eventually became slightly lower than the regular rates.

Maybe that will happen here, too. We don’t like the idea of ice shelves becoming so weak that, after 1000 years, can no longer hold on.