Chattanooga: Wildlife group wants lights out Saturday

Remember when mom would yell to turn out the lights when you left a room?

This Saturday, the international World Wildlife Fund will urge business, government and individuals to do much the same thing — turn out their lights for one hour from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. The goal is to show world leaders that people are serious about global policies on pollution and climate change.

This is the second year for the organization’s international Earth Hour.

“We hope to put climate change on the map and show our elected leaders that we stand behind them, united to finding a global solution to the energy crisis,” said Dan Forman, a spokesman for the fund. “It’s a symbolic gesture that is so strong and big that we hope our leaders will sit up and take action at several climate change conferences in the near future.”

Last year’s Earth Hour drew about 50 million participants, 37 million in the United States, he said. This year, the U.N. headquarters building in New York City, the Eiffel Tower and the AT&T Building in Nashville all are darkening their lights for the event.

Locally, organizers have had a harder time attracting big businesses to join the Earth Hour initiative. Local blogger Strat Parrott said he’s contacted a number of businesses and has several that are participating. Pilgrim’s Pride warehouse, Juncture, CreateHere, Coptix and employees at Airnet Group have joined the cause, he said.

But big players such as the city of Chattanooga, the Tennessee Aquarium, EPB and BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee had not signed on for the event by Monday afternoon, he said. EPB and Aquarium officials said they had pre-scheduled events that may prevent the darkening of their facilities.

For the city, Earth Hour didn’t seem to have the punch that really would cause a dip in global warming, said Anj McClain, director of GreenSpaces’ resource center.

“Maybe that would have a greater impact if it were once a month rather than just once a year,” she said. “But more than anything, it communicates that we all have a responsibility in regard to the environment.”

Ms. McClain sits on Chattanooga Mayor Ron Littlefield’s environmental task force, which didn’t recommend participating in the Earth Hour. The mayor’s spokesman, Richard Beeland, said the city would encourage employees, through e-mails, to participate at home and recognize participants online but, as far as he could tell, downtown’s tenants didn’t seem to be big energy hogs.

“I was downtown the other night specifically on a mission to see what buildings had lights on,” he said. “I was surprised to see that many of the biggest downtown buildings had the majority of their lights off.”

Still, Mr. Parrott said, the event mostly is about communicating the conservation message to the public.

“Earth Hour might not have a direct, equatable impact on kilowatt usage, but a lot of the idea behind it is just getting the idea of conservation out there,” Mr. Parrott said.