New Zealand was one of the first places on the planet to observe Earth Hour, an event where households are supposed to turn off their lights for one hour between 8pm and 9pm local time on 29 March 2008. This event is intended to raise awareness about carbon emissions and climate change.

Not content to simply sit at home in the dark this evening, Amy and I went up on the hills south of the city armed with camera, tripod, chairs, dark chocolate, and hot lemonade. After being a bit distracted by a stunning sunset, we got the camera set up about 10 minutes later than I wanted, at 8:05pm. For the next hour, I took a one second exposure of the city about every minute. The idea was to see whether there was any visible effect on the city lights as Earth Hour came and went.

I collected the 60 or so frames into a video, showing one per second. You can see the resulting Earth Hour 2008 video on YouTube. Be forewarned, however, that this may very well be the least engaging video on the internet. As far as I can tell, nothing interesting happened. Maybe people turned some lights off, maybe not, but it's impossible to tell.

For all the noise that has been generated around this event, it sure was anticlimactic.

Preemptive snarky comment reply: Yeah, we probably caused more carbon emissions driving up the hill than we would have if we'd stayed home and left our lights on. I suggested to Amy that we avoid that by riding our bicycles, but she wasn't having any of it. :)