Earth Hour:
A Manifesto for Listening to the Earth
Earth Hour is a moment of planetary listening.
Each Earth Day, just after sunrise in California — where Earth Day was born — and again just after sunrise in the United Kingdom, voices rise with the turning of the Earth.
Not in protest.
Not in debate.
But in reflection.
Ten elders and leading Earth change agents speak for four to five minutes each, offering words shaped by a lifetime of experience — words addressed not only to us, but to future generations.
This is Earth Hour.
Why Earth Hour Exists
We live in an age of acceleration: more information, more urgency, more noise.
What is increasingly rare is wisdom spoken slowly, from those who have watched the long arc of change.
Earth Hour was created to make space for that wisdom.
It is founded on a simple premise:
that the ecological crisis is not only technical or political, but relational — a rupture in how humanity understands its place within the living Earth.
Earth Hour does not seek to persuade.
It seeks to transmit.
What Earth Hour Asks of Its Speakers
Each speaker is invited to reflect on three questions:
How has your relationship with the Earth — Gaia — changed over time?
What have you learned from witnessing planetary and human change?
What would you say now to those who will inherit the future?
Speakers do not promote institutions or policies.
They speak as elders, witnesses, and stewards of perspective.
Why Sunrise Matters
Earth Hour follows the sun.
By gathering just after sunrise in two places linked by the Earth’s rotation, we are reminded that human time is nested within planetary time.
The Earth turns.
The light returns.
Voices follow.
A Living Archive for the Future
All Earth Hour messages are preserved in a freely accessible online archive — a growing library of short video reflections.
This archive is for students, educators, communities, families, and future listeners who may one day ask:
What did those before us understand?
What did they warn us about?
What did they still believe was possible?
Who Speaks for Gaia?
Earth Hour brings together voices shaped by long engagement with ecological reality, moral leadership, and global responsibility — figures such as Greta Thunberg, Prince William, Al Gore, David Attenborough, Christiana Figueres, and others who speak with gravity earned over time.
They do not speak for everyone.
They speak for the Earth — and for those yet to come.
An Invitation
Earth Hour asks very little.
Only that we pause.
That we listen.
That we remember the Earth is not only a system to manage, but a presence to honour.
Earth Hour begins at sunrise.
The listening continues.
Gaiarcadia Academy
Earth Hour is convened and stewarded by Gaiarcadia Academy, whose mission is to cultivate ecological literacy, planetary ethics, and intergenerational responsibility. The full Earth Hour archive is freely accessible at:
https://gaiarcadia.org/earth-hour/
Over time, this archive will become a living record of how elders across cultures, disciplines, and generations have understood their responsibility to Gaia and to those yet unborn. Students, educators, communities, and families will be able to return to these voices not as historical artefacts, but as moral companions.
Whole Life Times will return to Earth Hour each year in its January–March issue, reflecting on the most recent gathering, the themes that emerge, and the deeper questions they raise for culture, education, and planetary wellbeing.