Sydney - The two million Sydney residents who organisers said turned off their lights for 60 minutes during Saturday night's Earth Hour had a nasty shock when they opened their newspapers the next morning.
They learnt that the carbon emissions saved did no more than snuff out those of a single average Sydney resident over one year.
Energy use during what The Sydney Morning Herald gushed was "our gift to the world" was down 8,4 percent during that hour. Continues Below ↓
More surprising, the drop in electricity use was 17 per cent down from what was achieved during the first Earth Hour in 2007. If this trend were to continue, it wouldn't be long before Earth Hour was adding to the greenhouse gases that cause global warming rather than reducing them.
Greg Bourne is the chief executive of the Australian branch of the international environmental group the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the chief organiser of Earth Hour. He put a brave face on a disappointing outcome.
"It's less to do with the drop but the beginnings of the behavioural change," Bourne said. "Some of these key messages are beginning to get through, and we think they're probably getting through on a permanent basis."
The declared aim of Earth Hour was consciousness-raising, and in those terms, it was deemed a success. "One inspired idea that began in Sydney just 12 months ago has become a world movement," Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore crowed at a candlelit function overlooking the harbour.
Cities outside Australia taking part included Christchurch, Bangkok, Seoul, Dubai, Toronto, Manila, Copenhagen, Rome, Dublin, Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco and Mexico City.
Bourne said that up to 50-million people in 40 countries had joined in by turning lights off for an hour. Next year, he's hoping the idea would spread to China, India and Russia.
"If you can get a billion people saying we want action on climate change via Earth Hour, that will send a very clear message to the negotiations in Copenhagen," Bourne said, referring to a 2009 meeting that is to cap UN climate change talks with a new treaty on reducing carbon emissions.
But getting a clear message across to the people of Sydney proved difficult.
There were traffic snarls Saturday night as people drove to harbour foreshore vantage points to watch the lights on the Harbour Bridge and Opera House dim. And a restaurant that was an official participant in Earth Hour offered patrons a chance to win a new fridge in a raffle during their posh candlelit meal.
Even the nation's top eco-warrior, Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, stood accused of breathtaking hypocrisy.
"Earth Hour is a way in which individuals can take responsibility when it comes to climate change," Wong said at the Sydney launch. Even as she spoke, the lights in her empty Canberra office were ablaze.
Despite their declared enthusiasm for Earth Hour - an opinion poll showed 10-million Australians had participated in some way - there was a big gap between words and action.
Cameron O'Reilly, a spokesperson for electricity generators, applauded the WWF for awareness-raising but said Earth Hour fudged the need to prepare the public "for the real pain associated with climate change."
Reducing emissions more than a token amount requires a painful change in policy from the government and a readiness to sacrifice on the part of the general public, he said. Australians might now be more aware of that equation but action is not evident.
Three-quarters of Australians told pollsters that they like the idea of green energy, but only 10 percent have taken up the offers of subscribing to green energy that their electricity suppliers have popped in their letterboxes.
Three-quarters said they approve of new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's decision to join almost all other industrialised countries and ratify the UN Kyoto Protocol on reducing emissions, but more than a quarter of new cars leaving showrooms are petrol-guzzling four-wheel drives.
Few scoffed at the Earth Hour initiative. It was, in the words of Energy Users Association head Roman Domanski, "largely symbolic but symbolism is sometimes important." - Sapa-dpa
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