I used to participate in earth hour until I started doing clean energy research and learned how the grid really works. When you plug something into the wall you're not plugging into a giant battery, the power isn't stored there waiting for you to use it. The power you use was produced only moments before and if no one uses it it it wasted as heat. So the power companies spend tons of time and money learning people's behavior so they can predict the load and match their output to the demand. Earth hour throws this out of wack. If tons of people shut their power off for just an hour on a single day it introduces an unpredictable fluctuation into the demand. So, to avoid putting people who aren't part of earth hour in the dark, power companies err on keep their output roughly where it should be for that time of day (though some of them may be starting to figure out earth hour). This results in a TON of energy just being wasted. Kind of the opposite effect of earth hour, huh?
Don't get me wrong, I'm a total hippy doing a PhD in the hippy side of science and i think the idea of earth hour is good, but once you learn about how it all works you start to see that it's a little misguided.
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