Melinda Tuhus Photo
New Haven is one of hundreds of cities around the world that will turn off its official lights on Saturday for a celebration of Earth Hour. The lights will go off, and the fun will begin, if Moses Boone (pictured blowing a big bubble) has anything to say about it.
Boone and Justin Haaheim (pictured above) are members of Act New Haven, which took a leading role in organizing an event last October almost 300 people formed “350” on the Green to highlight the need to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million.
The goal of Earth Hour is the same — to highlight the need to address climate change.
Last year, according to its website (where viewers can see a video of the event), hundreds of millions of people around the world turned off their lights. This year in New Haven, people are encouraged to turn out their lights at home and at their businesses and come to the Green, bringing candles and musical instruments if possible for an acoustic jam session. (Organizers will also provide candles.) Even if you can’t join the party, you’re encouraged to cozy up to candlelight at home for an hour.
Christine Eppstein Tang, the city’s new sustainability director, got the DeStefano administration’s buy-in to turn off “non-security lights” in City Hall, 200 Orange St. and police headquarters at 1 Union Ave., for an hour Saturday beginning at 8:30 p.m. When asked why the non-security lights aren’t already turned off every night, Tang said she didn’t know. (This photo taken Thursday night shows City Hall Annex ablaze in lights on all five floors, although the Old City Hall adjacent to it was quite dark, except for the lights on the clock tower. Adjacent buildings — NewAlliance Bank and the Connecticut Financial Center — the city’s tallest building — were also dark.) Tang, who’s new on the job, said the question of lighting in city buildings will be taken up as part of the DeStefano administration’s comprehensive sustainability plan, the design and implementation of which she was hired to oversee.
Organizer Emily Freed is shown holding up two kinds of environmentally friendlier compact fluorescent light bulbs. Though more expensive up-front than the old, hot, incandescent bulbs, they last longer and so save money in the long run while reducing greenhouse gas emissions, since almost all power plants run on carbon fuels like coal and natural gas. Whatever kind of bulbs you use, her message is to turn them off during Earth Hour.
Boone has his own non-profit called Colored Planet (a reference to the earth, not the inhabitants of the earth). His goal is to make New Haven more sustainable in both food and energy. He’s also working to get a web domain extension of .eco that environmental groups and businesses could use, like the .com, .org and .edu extensions already in use.
And he mixed up his own soap bubble concoction for the young and young at heart who come out to the Green on Saturday. “I made a gallon of it,” he said, which could keep the entire population of New Haven in bubble heaven.