Earth Hour

captain usopp

Is anyone participating, or has anyone already participated in earth hour? Mine is less than an hour. It sounds fun. And for a good cause.

Might work on some paperwork. Nap, or maybe bring out my gameboy. :)

Aussie’s lead the way
Last year when 2.2 million Sydney residents and 2,100 businesses (including icons like the Harbour Bridge and Opera House) turned off their lights, the world took notice. During those first 60 minutes of Earth Hour darkness Sydney managed to decrease energy use by 10.2 percent – the equivalent of taking 48,000 cars off the road for a year.

Chicago takes a turn
What started off as a symbolic event in one city has grown into a global movement. Now in its second year, the event sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), will stretch across major cities in six continents. Businesses and homes will switch off their lights along with iconic buildings and national landmarks. This year's flagship city will be Chicago where residents will be watching as the skyline goes black for one hour on March 29.

Unified front
Earth Hour is hoping this one hour can demonstrate the connection between energy usage and climate change and show that we can address the issue of global warming as a united community.

Captain Brooke

Sounds cool, good that people are starting to care more about the earth, and it's also a good thing your helping, I might just do it myself!

Taleran

I'm definatly not

I find the entire concept to be silly

Bounty1Berry

We need more collectivist behaviour. Expecting people to willingly turn off things for an hour is not the answer– Effiencies of scale are what will allow us to maintain standard-of-living and at the same time, reduce ecological harm.

Examples:

Rather than having small, inefficient air-coolers for individual houses, make people live in apartment-block style dwellings which can be cooled with giant cooling plants. The efficiency could be improved, and having a single point of replacement will allow easier upgrades to better technology. (I note that modern standards require a new air conditioner to be more efficient than one 20 years old, but there's nothing to force the 20-year-old ones out of use)

Instead of individual cars, we need to enforce the use of public transit. Make driver's licences virtually impossible to obtain. This will also encourage densification of cities and the development of dwellings as mentioned above.

And get the damned lorries off the road. Inter-city shipping can be handled FAR more efficiently by the rail network, and instead, use trucks only for the short haul inside a city.

Captain Brooke

@Bounty1Berry:

We need more collectivist behaviour. Expecting people to willingly turn off things for an hour is not the answer– Effiencies of scale are what will allow us to maintain standard-of-living and at the same time, reduce ecological harm.

Examples:

Rather than having small, inefficient air-coolers for individual houses, make people live in apartment-block style dwellings which can be cooled with giant cooling plants. The efficiency could be improved, and having a single point of replacement will allow easier upgrades to better technology. (I note that modern standards require a new air conditioner to be more efficient than one 20 years old, but there's nothing to force the 20-year-old ones out of use)

Instead of individual cars, we need to enforce the use of public transit. Make driver's licences virtually impossible to obtain. This will also encourage densification of cities and the development of dwellings as mentioned above.

And get the damned lorries off the road. Inter-city shipping can be handled FAR more efficiently by the rail network, and instead, use trucks only for the short haul inside a city.

Well, it's just a start, don't you see how everyone is getting into this stuff now, it must be getting worst!

@Taleran:

I'm definatly not

I find the entire concept to be silly

How is it being silly, people care for the well being of the people in the future!

Taleran

by turning off their lights for an hour?

please If people really cared they'd do something serious this idea was a joke

Lobster Pot-Sticker

Earth Hour turned Google dark for a day..

captain usopp

actually, the idea is just to make people aware. I think they said something like turning off the power for an hour would save enough energy to power cars for a year, or something to that tune. That's pretty significant.

And it is effective. When Superstore started their fabric bag campain (to save the environment) They had advertisments on TV about how it takes 100 yrs for plastic bags to break down. I couldn't believe how many customers came back and were telling me "they never knew that before" The information really impacted them.

It's not about just forsing things on people "just cause somebody says so" You have to sell the idea to the person. Get them to understand why we need to do these things and get them to participate.

The message is now starting to effect the government and big buisnesses and it's starting to make a difference.

sparkleshine

I did earth hour~

Totally dark, couldn't see anything even with the candles and such, but it's a good idea. It's all about just getting people to work together and making them aware and such. Also an hour without light? Easy.

Bounty1Berry

Awareness is not an answer. If anything, it can be a distraction (every dollar spent on awareness campaigns is a dollar not spent to combat the problem on a technical basis)

I'm not even sure if we need the masses to be aware of the nature of problems, just steered correctly, either through regulations or incentives, to not make them worse. "We're banning plastic bags, but we're not going to waste money explaining why."

captain usopp

XD we have a new superstore in Milton. No plastic bags. The people were told why, and some people still got pissed off.

I like to know why things happen. It bugs me when people feed me that" just because" line. BS.

anyways, for my earth hour, I read the paper, and then cleaned my washroom by candle light.

Captain Brooke

WHOOO, Earth Hour was cool, forgot how cool my house looks with candles, maybe I'll do it more often, but anyway, I don't half the things they ask, cut off stuff when your not using it, turn off the lights when your not in the room, etc, so I guess I'm a ok citizen! lol