Saturday, March 28, 2009

Earth Hour (grumble, grumble)

What is this anyway? Lets guilt trip as many people as possible into shutting of their lights for an hour just after dark! It'll be fun! It'll be a phenomenon that will spread around the world! We'll feel good about ourselves for saving an entire hour's worth of energy! woohoo!

Who's dumb idea was this anyway?

Raise your hand if you're going to turn off your lights tonight (in about an hour) and light a bunch of candles or oil lamps instead. uh huh...

So, what you're telling me is that you're going to turn off your fairly efficient electrical lights and burn very inefficient petroleum based products to light up your house instead. And.. that's going to make you feel better about 'saving' electricity (which is going to be continually produced by the power plants throughout that hour anyway)?

And this is teaching us what exactly? To conserve energy by turning out the lights for an hour once a year? I don't think so... Cause I'm pretty sure that a week from now everyone will have forgotten all about it until this time next year.

You want to learn about energy conservation, lets implement a powerplant-controlled rolling brownout across the country on a daily basis. That might have a little more effect on the general population.

As for that 8:30 hour that is ever drawing closer... I'm sure I'll be guilted into turning out my lights to fit in with the rest of my neighbours. But I'm not going to go lighting a bunch of candles. Maybe I'll go for a walk...

1 comment:

  1. I kind of agree with you, but if last year was any indication it actually will have an impact that lasts longer then an hour. It raised awareness of how easy it is to turn out just one light and it caused a decrease in power consumption that lasted longer then a few days. It challenged people to think about what they are doing when they turn on the light.

    I gave myself a facial while my lights were out... that was challenging. Pete fed the baby (We had to use a bit of electiricty to warm up his bottle)and I offered to give him a facial but he thought it would be more fun to go visit our neighbours. Weird

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