Lights Out for Sydney

It's getting easier to find new ideas and actions for the environment. Today a small news item on Yahoo! Homepage caught my eye.

It appears that Sydney (Australia) city officials decided to power down a non-essential lights in the city for one hour. They entitled it Earth Hour. The people made an event out of it, children counting down, others dining by candlelight.

Sydney has been rated one of the worst carbon emitting cities in the world due to its reliance on coal burning power stations. The government decided that holding an event and actually engaging their constituents that they would begin to take actions themselves, turning off unused electronics and lights, conserving energy. If all goes well, they can reduce the carbon emissions of the city by 5%, and any reduction is better than none.