Video of the Day: Earth Hour 2012

The imagery is powerful: people from around the world, holding hands and candles in the dark, while iconic landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and Coliseum shut down their lights in recognition of Earth Hour 2012, one of the world’s largest voluntary actions for the environment. The evocative Sigur Rós soundtrack doesn’t hurt either.

Earth Hour calls upon individual citizens to switch off their lights for one hour to take a stand against climate change. Started in 2006 by WWF-Australia, the event quickly became a movement, spreading to hundreds of millions of people across 135 countries in just five years. Through an aggressive social media campaign, Earth Hour continues to send a strong message for environmental awareness, urging people to learn more about the global climate change crisis and take actions “beyond the hour” to lesson their impact.

This year’s Earth Hour is scheduled for Saturday, March 31, at 8:30 p.m. local time. If climate change is important to you, don’t miss the chance to join a movement for change.

Sigur Rós Heima Trailer


Sigur Rós is a band from Iceland. This coming November, they’ll be releasing a live DVD called Heima which chronicles their return home over several live shows. I just saw the trailer for the DVD today (above), and it’s exquisite. I’ve never been to Iceland, so I can’t speak first-handedly, but the outdoor footage in the trailer is absolutely gorgeous and very surreal. Many of the moon-like landscapes were shot at a live show performed at the Ásbyrgi canyon, 2 hours east of the second-largest Icelandic town of Akureyri. If the trailer is any indication of the feature-length production, I’ll be ordering the DVD (though I suppose it helps that I’m a fan of the band as well). Regardless, the footage is really re-sparking my interest in a trip to Iceland.