Do Your Part for Earth Hour – Turn off your Lights!
Posted by Jon Lee in Offtopic, Personal, tags: earth hour, environment, google
This is what the world looks like in terms of light pollution. Incandescent light bulbs are one of the largest drainers of electricity and today, the world wants to raise awareness by having everyone turn off all their lights for an hour from 8pm to 9pm (in their local time).
This means we won’t see all the lights in the world shut off at the same time but it’ll look more like a “wave” moving every hour. Even Google changed their homepage to raise awareness of this event!
From Google’s Earth Hour page:
On Saturday, March 29, 2008, Earth Hour invites people around the world to turn off their lights for one hour – from 8:00pm to 9:00pm in their local time zone. On this day, cities around the world, including Copenhagen, Chicago, Melbourne, Dubai, and Tel Aviv, will hold events to acknowledge their commitment to energy conservation.
Although it doesn’t specifically say to turn off your computer as well, I believe the intention is to raise awareness about energy conservation so I’d turn off all electricity you’re not using. Nothing to do without Internet access? Here are some things you can do without the Internet (but may require some good ol fashioned candle light).
So remember, do your part and tell your friends and family before 8pm! Let’s make a difference!
Popularity: 15% [?]
Entries (RSS)
Hey, I have turned off all the lights as well as heating equip. and… just except my laptop!
I have my lights out, only rockin’ the notebook right now.
The problem with events like this is that it only affects the people that actually care about the world around them. The people that should pay attention to an event like this are too busy driving big V8 SUV’s solo in the carpool lane while junior at home has every light on in the house despite the fact their playing video games in the basement.
Of course, this is a gross generalization, but people who do care about the world typically do their part to conserve and reuse whenever possible. The biggest problem with this, though, is that by having 20% of the population conserve energy, water, gasoline and everything else, we’re making it easier for the heavy consumers to keep going about their wasteful ways.
The most effective way to get people to start paying attention to events like this is to have everyone turn everything *on* for an hour. Once we start getting rolling blackouts and brownouts happening in months other than July and August, and when people start seeing “Out of Gas” signs like we did in the 70’s, perhaps then the majority of people will get the message.
Unfortunately, this isn’t really a solution, either … but it would certainly bring about serious lifestyle changes much faster than we’re currently progressing.
Most recycling programs started in the 80’s … so why do only 40% of people in North America regularily recycle?
I’m turning off the lights and all but one computer now.
I hope this event will have a measurable impact on energy use – I’ll do my part.
Malls in our country put off the lights yesterday to take part on the earth day celebration.
We should really take part on this celebration. After all we are living in the same planet and we only have one world to live in.
Hey it would be better that we save light and help for the betterment of the living. When ever theres a free time I put off all the lights and just keep my system on for reviewing the blogs.
Did that. Felt good, I must say.
Thats pretty cool. I hope my time hasn’t past yet (I don’t see googles black front page?)
We had a power out in Bangkok and that was our contribution I guess…
Some of us in our neighborhood did. Unfortunately, this did not receive the kind of publicity that it should have and so failed in many places.
I turned off the lights and most of my computers, but sadly, there wasn’t much attention for this in San Diego. I was saddened to see the home of Sea World, the San Diego Zoo, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, and a huge biotech industry fail this.
how do we look in the night if we not using any light source?
i thiunk i amjust hearing about this just now and its belated too.
already turns off my monitor and all other bulbs, except my pc. haha, need to download something.. sorry. however i think its a cool idea, we should do it once a month together in the world!
Starbucks in Malaysia did that at 8.00 pm to 9.00 pm the other day. The customers had to be informed that the lights were turned off for Earthday.
I thought it was pretty cool to turn off the lights in the big cities for once, but does it really help if use the wrong bulbs and the wrong resources the other 23 hours?
I guess energy is a world wide problem. We here in South Africa are currently experiencing power outages because of a power demand that’s more than what our power supplier can provide. So we’re all suffering because of that, most especially businesses as they lose billions in just the two to four hour power outages their area undergoes 3 times a week. But the bright side is that we’re now learning ways of saving energy.
Great post Jon!
I think its a great way to do some conservation. Afterall aren’t we always asking what can one person do against the polluting might of industries? This seems to be a great begining.
We really do need to conserve energy, not only on occasions like this, but must be done everyday. If you have appliances that are not in use, why not unplug it. Change your incandescent light bulbs with the ones that use less energy. With energy price going up nowadays, conserving on energy will save you more money.
This was a great idea but this didnt get the both the publicity and the response as much as it should have, being a serious concern. But hope the next time it is time for such it is well publicized .
Initiatives like these are fantastic, but singling out one day is wrong. Every day needs to be Earth Day! Our planet needs us to take better care of it, badly!