A global consciousness-raising event takes place today. It's called Earth Hour, and the idea is to get individuals, organizations and communities to turn off all nonessential electric lights and appliances for one hour: 8:30-9:30 PM local time.
The organizers are pitching this as an "election," where you vote with your power switches. They hope to demonstrate to political leaders that there's grass-roots, worldwide support for smarter energy policies. The "votes" will be tallied by seeing what happens to electric use in each time zone at the appointed hour.
No one's expected to shiver in the dark; that's not the idea. Instead, I think the real point and purpose of the exercise is to get people to stop and think about energy use in their home, especially with stuff that's normally on in their homes that doesn't really have to be.
It's a project that can't hurt anything and that might actually do some good. Check it out:
http://www.earthhour.org/home/
Fred,
ReplyDeleteWith any feel good project based on emotion, not reality, it can do a great deal of harm. I am installing floodlights for my American flag. The inaugural use will be Saturday night, in celebration of "Human Achievement Hour." With luck, I will have a few irate Greenies drop by and I can expose them to something new and different in their lives: FACTS
Treg
Fred--What flavor is the Kool-Aid today?
ReplyDeletehttp://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Earth-Hour/ss/events/sc/032809earthhour;_ylt=AjmaGSzJDX6cTA22xqmnRiJpaP0E/im:/090329/480/52ed3458e17e4893bb163abf3e8faf53/
ReplyDeleteIt always surprises me how much underlying venom there is in society. The Earth Hour was at most a minor consciousness-raising exercise that certainly did no harm and might even have done a tiny smidgen of good. Who, in reality, can argue that wasting energy per se is a good thing? But some viewed it as if it were a war crime or something. (You should see some of the private messages I got. Yikes!)
ReplyDeleteAnd this is a head spinner for me: Most of the anti-conservationists I know call themselves "conservatives." Conservatism without conserving. Isn't that like being a vegetarian, except that you don't eat vegetables?
But conservatives who are anti-conservation do deserve sympathy. It can't be easy. At the gentler and of the spectrum, anti-conservation conservatism is sort of like saying "My beliefs cancel themselves out." Espousing a self-negating belief system can't feel good.
At the other end of the spectrum, with the foam-on-the-lips bunch, it's more like: "I am a person of deeply held beliefs, and I will defend my beliefs with all the fervor and righteous fury that the Almighty has loaned to me.*"
(* Offer void if I actually have to suffer any personal inconvenience from implementing those beliefs. Offer also void in California and most of the First World. Rechargeable batteries not included.)
Anyway, for those who lean the other way, you'll be glad to know that tomorrow (2008/4/1) has been proclaimed as the day to celebrate, worldwide, the opposite beliefs about energy use. Here's a promo video from the UK:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6nAYIrxCiQ
er, that's 2009/4/1.
ReplyDeleteMy clocks must have lost a year during Earth Hour. :)