Happy Earth Hour 2009! You know what’s funny? I had no idea there was an Earth Hour 2009. Sorry. Guess I’m not very eco-conscious. Read the full post.
Mar 28
2009
06:00 PM ET
Earth Hour 2009: You had better be reading this in the dark!
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To miked: If I’m not mistaken (and I’m getting this from my father, the 30+ year electrical engineer and occasional mechanic) it does take an extra little spurt of juice to turn stuff on, like cars or computers, than they normally use for running purposes. However, if you leave something running for a long enough period of time, of course that’s going to at some point use more power than if you’d just turned the appliance off in the meantime. You wouldn’t leave your car idling for an hour because that’s obviously going to eat into your fuel. But if, say, you’re picking up a friend in your car and you expect them to be out a minute after you arrive, you probably should just leave the car running. Anyways – the point is, it’s well worth it to turn all the lights off for an hour.
Also, to people thinking like Lisa and the Snowdog – it’s both a symbolic act and a useful one. It does save some power, and it raises awareness about conserving power. I don’t care if you don’t believe in global warming, but surely you must see that until solar and wind power are somehow made more practical, we are using up finite resources for our electricity that will eventually leave our descendents S.O.L. Maybe not your grandkids, but somewhere down the line, people will be talking about the selfishness and short-sightedness of the people of this era. I’m just hoping that 1) they’ll find a new power source outside of coal and oil, which cannot be replaced, before it turns into a Mad Max-esque bloody fuel free-for-all!, and 2) they’ll find this solution before all the world’s cities look like Beijing. Seeing the images of Beijing pre-Olympic cleanup last summer scared the bejesus out of me.
One last comment, I swear – and it’s just a disclaimer. I swear I’m not trying to “puff out my chest”, Snowdog, or to talk like I know better than you…it’s just that that’s the reality of our situation as I see it, and I honestly do worry for the future. I don’t ask for people to change their lifestyles too much – just turn off electricity/water when you’re not using it. It does make a difference, and it saves you money!
I am Lebanese. Here in Lebanon we don’t ge4t electricity for over 10 hours a day. We rely heavily on generators. Yet, my friends and I managed to campaign for Earth Hour introducing it to people who didn’t even know the basics about global warming. It was a great success and we have much footage to prove it. On the other hand, people like Snoopdog were boasting their cynicism as though it makes them sound all the more intelligent. Sorry Snoopdog, it was well wasted on us… In our facebook group people showed so much enthusiasm that even we were surprised! Some said that they would apply this consciousness throughout the year and not only for one hour. That is the point. A poor country with limited resources, having suffered endless wars and conflicts taking an interest in the environment while Snoopdog sits comfortably on his behind seeing how best to provoke people with more awareness and selflessness than he can ever achieve. Interesting, don’t you think?
lets see…I was working at a movie rental store…and nope we didn’t shut off lights or the computers. Some people have to make money running a business, and Saturday night was a very busy night! Maybe cause some people shut off their electricty and went out to see what was open. But it’s just not practical for some places to shut down. Oh and By the way, we live by a dam and use water and wind for electricty. So not EVERYone is being wasteful of electricity. IF the water supply either starts running out, well then I’d worry, but we’d all be dead soon anyway without the water we need to live, so wouldn’t matter much either. There is always water.
I was at a concert, so I guess the dimmed house lights were already unnecessary! As for me – I think this is kind of a stupid thing, and I’m definitely a Greenie. We always turn off unnecessary lights – DUH, it seems like a no-brainer to me. Open the binds when it’s sunny outside and we don’t have lights on in the house until dusk.
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