I'd been following the buildup to Earth Hour for a few days; I was interested to see how it turned out. (For the record, a friend and I were out at an improv comedy show when the actual hour rolled around, which did not observe the festivities, but we did make sure to turn all the lights off before we left the house.)
The thing that struck me the most after the photos started rolling in was that it was hard to tell the difference between the 'lit' and the 'unlit' photos. Try it with the images above: who turned their lights out in Sydney? The Opera House, clearly, or at least it turned off the big ones - but the rest of the image looks exactly the same. Especially that searchlight slightly left of center pointing directly at the camera. (Photos from the San Francisco Chronicle.)
Some critics argued that Earth Hour was a really bad idea: that darkness symbolized looking backward to deep, dark metaphors of decay, danger and death, while light represents hope, life and salvation - amongst other redeeming qualities. I'm not sure most people saw the metaphors, even if they did see prominent buildings go dark in their local cities.
The bigger question I have is "why were all the office building lights on at 8:30pm on a Saturday?" Henry Gifford, a well-known player and speaker in the energy efficiency field, has issues with this too. 'Green' buildings, such as those receiving LEED certification, are supposed to use less energy than a comparable conventional building. Yet Gifford argues that LEED-certified buildings actually use 29% more energy than comparable conventional buildings.
There are two reasons for this: firstly, LEED requires that the energy usage of a new building be modeled prior to certification. The certification is based on points, which partially rely on how well the building performs in the model. A building can earn up to 10 points for appearing to be energy efficient in the model - and LEED never checks after the certification to see if the building's actual performance in any way resembles that of the model. A building can earn a single extra point for going through a complicated and expensive procedure to verify the actual performance against the model - but why, when you can earn that same point for putting a cheap bike rack out front? (There's a nice paper explaining all this on his website. Scroll down to the section title "Why LEED Buildings Use More Energy Than Comprable Buildings, and How To Avoid the Same Results (in jurisdictions where LEED is not required by law)," and click the first link.)
The second reason that LEED doesn't result in energy savings is because energy usage depends far more on how the occupants use the building than how the architects and engineers designed it. It doesn't make a lot of difference if energy-saving light bulbs are used, but people still leave them on all night. Indeed, there may be something of a rebound effect at work: people think that because they're working in a 'green' building, it's OK for them to leave the lights on.
Events like Earth Hour are great for raising awareness, but awareness has to be followed up with action. Action can save both energy and money: perhaps a sizeable chunk of the $2.8 billion U.S. companies waste annually by leaving computers on overnight.
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