Were you left in the dark last night? If you were not observing Earth Hour, you may have been as you would not have known why the lights went out.
But if you were observing Earth Hour, then you would have been alert to the global campaign to switch off, or dim, lights for one hour from 8pm local time. The switch-off or turn down was an attempt to draw the public's attention to climate change.
The campaign began in Sydney, Australia, only last year, but quickly snowballed as other cities became interested. It now involves 35 countries at last count, but how many participated will not be known until 0900 GMT today - 24 hours after it started yesterday.
Last year over two million residents in Sydney participated in the campaign, thereby cutting energy use by more than 10 per cent for the hour. Extrapolating that percentage to a global perspective and the total energy saving becomes very significant indeed. But more than that, although that in itself is important, is the message it drives home to the public.
With so much office and domestic life needing electrical products, most of which have standby power, there is an ever-increasing demand and consumption of electricity. It is estimated that in the average home, 13 per cent of its annual electricity bill is spent on standby products.
But the US Department of Energy estimates that standby power could consume as much as 20 per cent of household electricity by 2010.
In 2000, a group of researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that each year Americans spend about $4 billion just on standby power alone; generating that electricity puts roughly 27 million tons of CO2-equivalent emissions into the atmosphere.
Together with Sydney, Bangkok, London and Chicago, Dubai also took part in the campaign driving home the importance of conservation, reminding everyone that we can all make a difference.
