Calgary gives middle finger to Earth Hour

Saturday evening was Earth Hour (I’ll admit now that I knew it was coming but didn’t realize until Sunday when it was), and saw many people across Earth turning off their lights from 8-9pm local time.  Many Canadian cities saw drops of up to 9% consumption, and some smaller towns went completely dark!

However, in the heart of fossil-fuel burning Alberta, Calgary saw an increase in power consumption:

Calgary is the only known city in Canada where energy consumption actually went up during Earth Hour, a trend organizers pinned on colder weather and a late start locally in promoting the global event.

The “late start” I think refers to people not being organized in Calgary, unless people only started turning off around 8:30 or 8:45 and had only a little time.  One other reason given is that there was a Flames vs. Oilers game (Oilers won 2-1) that evening as well.

This is the province in which I live, it’s pretty sad.