Belleville, Ontario Joins 'EARTH HOUR 2008'-Has Your Community Taken Up The Challenge Yet?

Global warming is the most serious issue facing every single living being on the planet today and as awareness increases, more and more communities are taking action to combat the continuing degradation of our planet's atmosphere.

Sydney, Australia demonstrated just how much of a difference one hour and one city can make last year when the residents turned off all of their lights for just 60 minutes.
How much of a difference? The amount is staggering when you consider how many cities there are on earth and how many hours in a day, month, year.
By turning off their lights for just 60 minutes, Sydney was able to stop 25,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from entering the earth's atmosphere.

What began in Sydney, Australia, has now spread around the globe as more and more cities and communities join the 'EARTH HOUR' initiative in an effort to increase awareness of the tragic consequence mankind and it's advances have had upon the earth.

Earth Hour is scheduled for 8pm on March 29th and if your community has not pledged to take part yet, please ask yourselves and your mayor and news media 'Why not?'.
Helping your community to become part of this very important event is within your power and there are guidelines you can follow to ensure that your efforts will be successful.

This initiative speaks very loudly to governments worldwide that the time to wake up and take SERIOUS action is now. Tomorrow will be too late.
Many scientists believe we have already gone beyond the 'tipping' point and may not be able to stop the process we have so neglectfully begun.

Belleville and Quinte West, Ontario have commited to being a part of EARTH HOUR 2008 and on March 29th at 8pm, all residents and businesses will be turning off their lights for 60 minutes.
This initiative has now reached over 22 Canadian cities and hopefully, before March 29th arrives, all of Canada will have made the commitment.

What can we do in Ontario by committing to this challenge for one hour?
It remains to be seen and I hope that you, as a part of this earth we call home, our ONLY home, will commit to this now by recording it on your calendar and by telling all of your friends, family, acquaintances and if you have a public platform, using it to speak out.

In Ontario the demand for electricity at 8 pm on March 29th, 2007 was 18,969 megawatts. This is a very significant portion of the 27,000 megawatts of power available in Ontario, 17.8 % of which is generated by the burning of coal.
Lights are a relatively small portion of the overall demand for electricity and make up approximately 15 % of the demand.

If just over 2 million people in Sydney, Australia were able to stop 25,000 tonnes of CO2 from entering the atmosphere by turning out their lights for 60 minutes, how much can we as an entire globe stop?

In this urgent initiative, that will sweep the entire planet as each city turns off their lights at 8pm their local time, lays the seed that will raise awareness to a global level and possibly unite us all in our last chance to begin to take the struggling life of our only home to heart and commit to saving it.

If we each commit to effecting positive change now, I believe that anything is possible and we just may be able to return this planet to the clean, ecologically diverse and healthy garden it once was.

Changes You Can Implement:

• Calculate Your Carbon and Cash Savings
  
  
• Ten Things You Can Do To Help Curb Global Warming
  
  
• Calculate Your Impact on Global Warming
  
  
• Reduce Your Impact At Home
  
  
• Travel the Globe to See What's Going On
  
  
• 51 Things We Can Do to Save the Environment
  
  
• Ontario EARTH HOUR updates and global news items, tips, and more
  
  
• Take Action! What Things Can You Do First?

©2008JoSmith

Jo-Anne Smith, B.Sc.
Sales Representative
Royal Lepage ProAlliance Realty, Brokerage
613-922-5978 Direct
613-966-6060 Office