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Earth Hour Shines the Light on Las Vegas

Even when it turns off the lights, Las Vegas has a way of outshining other cities. To hype up Earth Hour, Vegas style, the City brought out showgirls to prance and pose with the World Wildlife Fund panda. In a City-produced PSA video, Donny and Marie Osmond drummed up support for the cause, and in another PSA, Alanis Morissette, uh, clipped her toenails to fight climate change.

Hey, it worked. Hundreds of people showed up on the strip and were given glow sticks as they watched the casino lights go black, one by one. Perhaps thousands more in the city dimmed their lights and maybe even learned for the first time why using energy creates greenhouse gas emissions and leads to global warming. Yes, the same thing happened in 4,000 cities across the world, but Vegas’ event is a big deal to me: One of the brightest cities in the world went dark for a full hour. Vegas has always been symbolic, but now we have to ask, symbolic of what?