Few participate in Columbia's Earth Hour

MU will celebrate on Wednesday with its Mizzou Blackout.

By Andrew Denney

Published March 31, 2009

On Saturday, MU and several Columbia businesses took part in Earth Hour, a global event that encouraged people to turn their lights off for an hour in symbolic support of climate change.

The lights were shut off at 8:30 p.m. Columbia Climate Change Coalition Director Monta Welch said the inclement weather provided a good backdrop for the program.

"The climate is changing," Welch said. "There is unequivocal evidence to that."

Welch said the World Wildlife Fund spearheaded the event in Sydney, Australia, in 2007, when the country was facing a huge drought. Since then the event has spread to more than 4000 cities in 84 countries.

After the dimming of the lights at Jesse Hall, the small group walked a few blocks to the Missouri United Methodist Church, where Interfaith Care for Creation held a meeting in which different religious views pertaining to the environment and climate change were discussed. Less than 30 people attended the meeting. Representatives from the League of Women Voters, the Sierra Club's Columbia chapter and Global Action to Prevent War and Armed Conflict were in attendance.

Vellore Gopalaratnam, president of the executive board at the Hindu Temple, said one of the tenants of Hinduism is protection of the natural world.

"We all are stewards and custodians of it," he said.

Jim Kruger, Board of Directors president at Congregation Beth Shalom, said the creator has left mankind with stewardship over the world.

"The creation of this world isn't finished," he said. "There are some things that need to be done."

Mark Foecking, a research specialist for the MU veterinary pathobiology department, discussed ways that residents could reduce their biological footprint through retrofitting their homes.

"I feel that with problems we have with climate change and energy depletion that we can't wait for other entities to do it for us," he said.

He discussed how he has made his house "98 percent off the grid" through the use of solar panels.

Despite the modest amount of participation in the event by Columbia residents, the event has been gaining notoriety with each subsequent year since its creation.

The United Nations decided to participate this year to drum up global support for new U.N. climate change legislation, which will be addressed at a global environmental summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December.

Because of the U.N.'s involvement, critics attacked the event as being over-politicized, and some groups even encouraged protesting it.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank that advocates for limited government and free markets, announced they would recognize Human Achievement Hour during Earth Hour, in which people and businesses that continued to use energy during the hour were lauded.

"Earth Hour is a viable alternative to human achievement hour," CEI Senior Fellow Eli Lehrer said in a news release. "Those who wish to celebrate Earth Hour should sit in the dark, turn off the heat and breathe as little as possible."

While the world celebrated Earth Hour Saturday, MU missed out due to spring break. Sustain Mizzou, Greeks Going Green and the Residence Halls Association are sponsoring "Blackout Mizzou" on April 1 from 8 to 9 p.m. to catch up.

According to an MU news release, multiple buildings and fields on campus will turn their lights off and all residence halls will also encourage students to participate.

"Our goal is to help people learn energy conservation," said Emily Albertson, Sustain Mizzou Vice President of Programming. "It's not something you would do 24 hours a day, but we're trying to show students how easy it is to just turn off the lights for an hour a day and do something else. It's going to show students how to conserve energy in their everyday lives."