For the fitf time At 8:30 PM on Saturday 26th March 2011, lights were switched off around the globe for Earth Hour. This action, leaded by WWF is to increase people’s awareness of ecological issues . Earth Hour started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia when 2.2 million individuals and more than 2,000 businesses turned their lights off for one hour to take a stand against climate change.However, this earth hour created a significant debate this year. On Saturday 27 March, Earth Hour 2010 became the biggest Earth Hour ever. A record 128 countries and territories joined the global display of climate action.

On one hand, for the ecologist, this hour is purely symbolic and make people realize how each person can make a chance for our planet.
On the other hands, many citizens find this hour useless and some of them would say counterproductive. Indeed, millions of people switching off the lights at the same time créâtes a electrical consumption peak.

Since 2007, the évent is very famous in the world. This year, WWF was expecting the participation of 126 countries, 4000 cities and monuments such as Gizeh pyramids in Egypt, the Christ the redeemer statue in Brazil, the acropolis in Greece. In Paris, many monuments were out of lights like the Effel tower, Notre dame cathédral, Saint Michel fountain ect..

For this NGO, beyond the symbolic évent, Earth Hour allowed France to make an economy of 1%, which is the daily consumption of a city like Lyon. However, as is was denonced, those attempts could be considered as useless because switching off the lights of a gaz or oil factory leads to pollution peaks. Following this critisms, the french WWF explains how they were preparing this évent since March to avoid those peaks : hydraulic dams were able to stabilize the electric network.

Interested or not in this Earth hour, this type of évents allow people to treat a major issue : the lighting problem which represents 1/5 of the electric world consumption. Many cities are in