Most events in Calgary aim to put on the lights, but over the weekend at City of Calgary facilities, local businesses, and at the Calgary Public Library, Earth Hour proved to be the opposite.

The annual event looked at individual changes to energy use that can have larger and wider environmental impacts, was recognized on March 23.

Michael Byerley, a climate coordinator with the Arusha Centre and speaker at Unplugged during Earth Hour at the Calgary Central Library, said that the annual hour remains important year after year.

“I think it’s important to have places to show up and to have person-to-person contact, and see the social acceptance and the wide diversity of people that are interested in things,” Byerley

“A lot of things around the issue of climate change… we have different viewpoints, and not everyone is being earnest about the problem and they’re more protecting their interest in position. I think that off-puts people, whereas climate change is something that affects everyone. We all have a stake in it, and it’s important to be present for it, and understand what it feels like for people.”

He said that there has been a real transformation between 2007 when Earth Hour began, to today, including the participation of partner organizations like the City of Calgary.

“In the first early days of Earth Hour, the political climate didn’t really permit the City to be involved. We weren’t supposed to talk about climate change, but we’ve had great progress,” Byerley said.

“We have a council that has declared a climate crisis—a climate emergency—our national government declared a climate crisis, climate emergency, and these intentions are super important.”

Robert Tremblay, the co-chair of the Calgary Climate Hub board of directors, said that while Earth Hour has less prominence now that individuals are more likely to engage in energy saving year-round, the in-person event was still a useful way to get people more deeply involved in climate change.

“To some extent, you know, this is maybe a little less special just because we’re talking about it 24/7 365 now, as opposed to just just for an hour a year. But I think it’s still really important to get people together like this,” Tremblay said.

“Especially for those younger Calgarians, you’ll just get them active and literate in this space.”

On this year’s event, taking place during a period of drought in the province with near-weekly press conferences from the Government of Alberta on the issue, he said it highlighted efforts beyond the hour.

“I think the City, as far as I know, has a lot of this under control. I think we’re well prepared for the drought. But I think it really highlights the need to take actions on climate and on sustainability more generally,” Tremblay said.

“And I think that’ll only become more obvious throughout the year.”

Earth Hour is just one hour, but worldwide participation adds up

On the worth of just one hour, Byerley said that an hour can mean a lot of things when put into the right context.

“An hour’s worth quite a lot of things, especially if you were trying to catch a plane and you were an hour late,” he said.

“Earth Hour is worth an enormous amount. The one hour of energy being cut out here is 4/1000th of a percent of the whole global energy budget. It’s an extremely ludicrous amount of power.”

The discussion doesn’t have to be entirely doom either, he said.

“We’ve had a very strange winter. It’s been super warm, and I’m a skier and I’m gonna call this warm winter. It’s really kind of wrecking things, but there’s lots of good things: You can go for a run, your heating bill was less,” Byerley said.

“Every single good thing that comes along, we still need to celebrate its worth. Because if all we’re always saying is it’s a bad punch line coming, then there’s like no reason to be going forward.”

Mayor Jyoti Gondek, who spoke at the opening of Unplugged on behalf of city council, highlighted the positive side of the climate change work being done.

“It’s important to recognize that the environmental and climate actions that we take in our city add to the efforts of other cities and countries and we can do this around the world because we all have a part to play,” she said.

Mayor Gondek also touted the efforts that the City has undertaken outside of Earth Hour to address energy usage—namely that the city’s LRT system is 100 per cent powered by wind energy generation.

The CTrain was the first LRT in North America to be powered entirely by wind-generated electricity, in 2001.

Climate change extends to social issues for advocates

The issue of climate change, said Byerley, goes beyond somewhat remote discussion of carbon emissions and instead extends into the social and political realms for everyday people.

“Climate change is more than pollution. It’s land use, it’s money, it’s shipping, it’s people’s relationships. It’s taking things and not replacing them. It’s extraction, rather than regeneration,” he said.

He said that people doing everyday things that benefit themselves, can also serve to benefit the environment.

“Having your own garden, biking, those things are low cumulative impact, but they’re important for personal impact because if we’re not engaged, hopeful, vibrant, and pleased to be living, we can’t do the other work,” Byerley said.

“I think it’s finding something that speaks to you, and doing your best on it. Also really trusting and listening to the experience of anyone around you that wants to offer experience.”

That listening also extends to the environment itself, said Byerley.

“If someone asked me for a life jacket in the middle of the river, what do you do? You give them the life jacket because they know what they need. That’s a grim metaphor for dealing with the climate crisis but impacted people, communities, businesses, nature itself, it quite clearly shows what it needs,” he said.

“It needs more water, it needs less trees being cut down. It needs people that can afford to eat good food. It needs room for people that are coming from places that are burning up to actually live and be safe and continue their traditions.”

For Tremblay, that work in context extends from individual efforts to systematic change.

“I think systemic action is the clear answer usually, but the thing is, systemic action is always made up of individual actions. Whether we’re asking council to make changes, it takes individuals going to speak, but then on the other spectrum we all do need to be doing things to de-carbonize as well,” he said.

“Everybody doesn’t need to do it tomorrow, but we all need to be doing it over the next couple of decades. So there is a lot of different things we all need to be doing, and I think an event like this exposes people and lets them know what can what they can do.”