March 28, 2026 marks the 20th Anniversary of Earth Hour. There are 8760 hours in a year, so one hour for our Earth doesn’t seem too much to ask. My Town of Caledon, Ontario, is generating a lot of media releases about our Earth Hour celebrations this year, with “Environmental Pledges” and community gatherings to celebrate our environmental literacy on this one hour out of eight thousand seven hundred sixty.
That’s a commitment of 1:8760 hours … ah, not quite enough to turn the tide.
To be clear, those pledges made in that brief hour in March are intended to be turned into action for Earth Day on April 22. And those actions on that one single day out of 364.25 days are intended to become an integral part of our lifestyle for the rest of the year.
Sadly, for many, that March Hour is all that Earth gets. Seems like it was too much to celebrate a whole Earth Day. I mean, really, a whole day? Twenty four hours for our Earth? Who has time for that these days? And a whole year? Inconceivable!
The first Earth Hour was initiated by the World Wildlife Federation in Sydney, Australia in 2007. After 36 years of Earth Day celebrations it seemed like the human attention span was fading and it was harder to draw a crowd for photo ops. But an hour? Hey, almost any over consuming society should be able to come out for an hour! It also honoured the origins of the very first Earth Day proposed in 1969 by American peace activist John McConnell to take place on the Vernal Equinox in March.
That idea was completed in 1969 by Senator Gaylord Nelson. Interestingly, Senator Nelson had accompanied President John Fitzgerald Kennedy on his famous 5 day “Conservation Tour” in 1963. Kennedy planted a seed that grew in Nelson. That torch was passed to Harvard graduate student Denis Hayes which led to Earth Day 1970.
I remember the first Earth Day very well. It was my second year of teaching in 1970 and my Grade Five class spent the day cleaning up the local green spaces around our school. My classes celebrated Earth Day every day from then until the day I retired from classroom teaching. And I celebrated it every day, and continue to the present. Why?
From the WMO and the UN March 23/26: The World Meteorological Organization – Earth’s energy imbalance (the planet is holding more heat than it can release) is the highest in sixty-five years of record keeping, and 2015 to 2025 have been the eleven hottest years recorded since modern weather records started in 1850.
Antonio Guterres, Director General of the UN stated “Planet Earth is being pushing beyond its limits. Every key climate indicator is flashing red.”
That’s why. The science is clear. We’re either all in, or we’re out. The way I see it.
First, I apologize to my regular readers for my prolonged absence from the blog. I was deep into finishing off several stories during a month’s sabbatical in Exeter. And then I returned to an operation on my wrist and came home with both wrists in braces that made keyboarding a trifle difficult. And then I got an invitation from a former student to speak to his organization … Ontario Nurses for the Environment. Whoa!
This is the face of Donald’s Board of Peace.
