…and Welcome Back Online!

Sponsored by HP, one of the larger polluters in the world, I wonder if Exxon and BP will get in on it too next year.

Great job, I wonder if we should recycle four cans and take our news papers to the recycle depot in the hummers.

Earth hour is not raising awareness it’s just making people feel like corporations care. Corporations are really just humoring those who are gullible enough to believe that they care about anything more than the bottom line.

Way to be sucked in guys.

I tried to click on here and it was complete blackness with ‘MG will not be online from 8-9″.. that was neat.

Goona be interesting in about 20 minutes here. I have 3 guys here playing PS2 right now.. They are goona hate me in 3-2-1………….

It was fun for my family. We played Scrabble by candlelight.

Just wanted to check in to see if there were any updates before I pulled the plug for a bit.

Nice to see that you all are doing the same!!

Just turned the computer back on. I had a relaxing hour and a bit reading by candlelight.

I originally wasn’t going to do anything, but at the last minute, I figured “oh, what the hell…” and turned my lights and computer off. I know that I could have done more by unplugging everything and such, but to be honest, I didn’t consider this as massive of an event as many other people did, and I really hate setting all my clocks. I’m a pretty cynical person though, and I personally don’t think that it’s really going to change anything. I don’t think awareness is much of an issue (or at least one that will be fixed by a gimmick like this). It’s making people care that is the problem. I could be wrong though (as usual, I hope I am), so I figured I’d join in. Certainly wasn’t going to hurt anything…I’m just glad that nobody burned my apartment down within that hour. An apartment building almost entirely made up of university students a Saturday night (and the alcohol that it involves) candles = a disaster just waiting to happen.

I don’t even think we’re supposed to light candles in this building…hmmm…

Well, my roomates and I p[articipated in Earth Hour. We also shut down the breakers in the apartment, lit several candles and sat around playing board games. It was time for us to chat in the darkness- so we really enjoyed it.

We discussed how it is too bad, things like this weren’t done more often. It doesn’t require much effort and gives our little planet a tiny break from all the stress we put on it.

I read a book by candlelight. :)

I tried to participate the best I could, but best I could do was unplug everything in my room before I left for work and shut off the light in the one break room I had control over for the last half hour of the event.

Other than that, I actually have to work for a corporation who wouldn’t take a moment of their time to at least dim the lights in the center to get into the spirt of it. :(

A friend and myself went to another friend’s place and spent the whole evening talking, with only candles lit and the breaker off. It was pleasant, a very warming atmosphere, and made us all wonder why we can’t do that all the time when we hang out? It was soothing and felt good to be a part of.

I usually don’t have any lights on in my basement suite (although in reality I do only have 3 lights in total) but I did make sure they were off. As boredom hits me quickly, I didn’t shut off my computer and just listening to music while Java.
In retrospect I guess it was like any other day for me (unfortunately) but I did take a break from my computer and drew a bit.
I didn’t know Earth Hour existed save for this years advertisements. It seems however that its because one of those things where people jump on the band wagon just to say they did it. While that might not neccesarilly be a bad thing, I wonder how big it will be next year. I also wonder if we could slowly extend it to two hours… maybe a whole day?

I enjoyed the time. I turned out all the lights and lit about 10 candles and read a good book by myself with a glass of red wine

The reality is though, I only participated to support the raising of awareness that “somethings” need to be done. The actual act of us all turning out our lights and unplugging everything was misguided and would not have the intended effects.

I listened to a great interview on the CBC show “Ideas” a while back with David Sanborn Scott who wrote a book called “Smelling Land - the Hydrogen Solution”. He is the world authority on Hydrogen as a future energy source. Here are some highlights for me as to what he said,

Terms such as “Global Warming” and “Energy Crisis” were created by people who didn’t want anything to change. The more accurate terms should be “World Climate Catastrophe” and “Fossil Fuel Crisis”. Global Warming sounds kinda good and energy crisis takes the spotlight off the oil industry.

The reality is we don’t necessarily have an energy crisis per se. We can create lots of energy in a mix of many different clean ways. We have Hydro, wind, solar, hydrogen and apparently nuclear however I don’t know enough about that one. It is the use of fossil fuels that is leading to the increase in carbon in the atmosphere and the catastrophic environment events of the past few years.

Incandescent lights radiate heat. Not a lot but some. When many lights are lit in a room supplied by hydro electricity they actually help raise the temperature by a degree or two. When we all turn them off during the cold months, we need to compensate for that heatwise by having our furnace or boiler work more. Furnaces and boilers work off of gas and oil, so using them more actually puts more carbon into the atmosphere and feeds more money to the fossil fuel industry.

So next year, earth hour needs to be in the summer when all our furnaces are off or it should be something more meaningful, like an hour of the day where no one drives their car.

Joe

I don’t hear much talk about the success of the actual goal of the lights out initiative: making people realize that lighting draws a significant amount of power and that they should switch over to more efficient bulbs and turn lights off unless they are needed. Anyone know about this?

Also, I wonder if the ultimate CO2 impact of producing and using a candle is greater than that for a compact fluorescent bulb of similar wattage? Candles don’t put out very much light compared to the amount of heat they generate. Just something to consider, although I realize the earth hour program is mostly symbolic.

i banged my fucking knee twice in the dark.

oh i suffer for mother earth.

It was interesting to do. There should be more Earth hours.

Awesome…

There are some sweet looking sky line pictures popping up from last nights event …

Charmaine .. totally …! There should be an Earth hour once a month at least!!

I took the breaker down and bundled up and took a walk. I noticed that most of my town did go dark. Met other people that were doing the same and we all talked for the hour.

Just a great thing for everyone to do.

HOLY CYNICS!!

Forget the awareness part of it, or the irony in the biggest pollution-creating corporations taking part….

The act itself, of people turning of theirlights for an hour, is an immense act of energy conservation. In that one hour, how much energy did we save? Isn’t that good enough for people? OK so after that hour, everything switched back on… so the cynics say, “that was dumb, WAY TO BE SUCKED IN GUYS” as the one person said on this message board.

But for one hour, the pressure was relieved from the Earth. It’s not a lot, but it’s one hour. And it got people talking about it. We went out for dinner, my boyfriend and his parents, and we don’t normally talk about this kind of thing and we actually started to talk about our own energy consumption. That’s cool!

Sure, next week, we’ll forget it about it likely and have all of our lights on and be bad energy hogs. But whatever. For one hour, it happened.

I’m a cynic too, but even I can appreciate the magnitude of shutting things down for an hour. I prefer to see it as “wow, an entire hour” instead of “pssh, its only an hour”.

It’s a start. Everything has to start somewhere.

i was at work and missed it…. we didnt take part of it but before i left for work, i shut down the breakers

Man, what a bunch of complainers.
Did it solve the world’s problems? No. But, I know a lot of people that did something different, whether it was go for a long walk (go for their bodies), went out and spoke to neighbours (good for community), and getting people talking raised awareness. I completely agree that the one hour probably did nothing in terms of reducing, or solving any problems. BUT, it got people talking, thinking, etc.
My housemate and I turned off and unplugged everything in our apartment and went for a walk through downtown Peterborough. It was nice just to get out of the house. When we came back, we just lit candles and sat around, doing nothing. We didnt turn out power back on for about 3 or 4 hours. Did that do anything? Probably not, but, it was a little bit, and it was fun. So all the negative talkers can go to hell. At least we participated. Does it hurt so much to participate? No. It was a lot of fun not using power and realizing how much we depend on it.

Well a bit late to add my two-penny worth (or two cents as you guys like to put it!), but Earth Hour didn’t even raise a flutter here in Europe. There was nothing on the news – was it just a North American thing? I wondered why Google was black…
As a kid in the seventies, I remember the UK going thru an extremely volatile political period. Worl oil prices were spiralling out of control and industrial strikes were the norm. Aside from the imposed four-day (working) week, there were regulated power cuts EVERY night. We had great fun, toasting over a real fire and using candles to find our way. We are already being told it is too late to save The Planet, but enforced power cuts may not be a bad idea.
Off-topic, can I apologise to Matt for my drunken ramblings on here on Friday nite. Sorry sweetheart, *blush*. Pissed wasn’t the word for it. I spent the entire evening in a stupor, watching Matt on Youtube via AppleTV. It didn’t help that the keys on my iBook kept swapping places while I was trying to type. Honest.

i went for a three hour walk in downtown toronto with some friends. it wasnt toooo too cold. had some good fun lol.

Quoting A.J.Rowley:

Quoting windsandandstars:

Sponsored by HP, one of the larger polluters in the world, I wonder if Exxon and BP will get in on it too next year.

Great job, I wonder if we should recycle four cans and take our news papers to the recycle depot in the hummers.

Earth hour is not raising awareness it’s just making people feel like corporations care. Corporations are really just humoring those who are gullible enough to believe that they care about anything more than the bottom line.

Way to be sucked in guys.

Really? You’re down on the Earth Hour? Oh my.

Actually, it was a pretty interesting experience. We found out we had lights on we weren’t even really aware of. Now that’s illuminating.

Actually that’s a good point.. my husband was saying the same thing.. it’s great that we care but we are being sucked in to believe that corporations care.. we wondered how many of the real polluters on this earth bothered to shut off a few lights.. anyone have word on that?? Did walmart shut down (I dont care what the commercials say, their parking lot is lit up like nuclear Christmas at 3am) I am curious to see if some major polluting factories shut down for the hour.. I think that’s where the difference is.. did people stay off the roads?

My Dad mentioned something interesting today in regards to the Earth Hour…
He said that although it’s a good idea for people to think about it, it’s our generation (the 1970’s and onwards folk) who use more energy than anybody ever could when he was younger and yet our generation is in outrage about it…yet,we also consume more and buy into all the technological advances and applications (facebook, for example).
Never really thought about it that way before…
I also wondered the same thing about earth hour as well…Why is their Earth Hour events??? using electricity that is supposed to be off…doesn’t that defeat the purpose? And isn’t it also promoting contradictory messages.
I’m a fence sitter.
I think it’s important to participate in these events because I’ve always felt strongly that we need to make changes, I also disagree with it, because it makes people who don’t change, feel good about themselves just because they participated for that ONE hour.
I also agree with someone else’s post who asked if people were on the road during earth hour, and I can attest from looking out my window, that lots of people were on the road, emitting greenhouse gas.
BAH, Life is catch twenty-two.

I was working during Earth Hour here, at the Ricoh Coliseum… obviously turning off the bowl lights would have scared the crap out of everyone and would certainly not have been beneficial to the Marlies, but all of the exterior TVs, signs, concourse boards, and lights where applicable, were turned out… we were told the ACC did the same.

Quoting Stormydog:

Well a bit late to add my two-penny worth (or two cents as you guys like to put it!), but Earth Hour didn’t even raise a flutter here in Europe. There was nothing on the news – was it just a North American thing? I wondered why Google was black…
As a kid in the seventies, I remember the UK going thru an extremely volatile political period. Worl oil prices were spiralling out of control and industrial strikes were the norm. Aside from the imposed four-day (working) week, there were regulated power cuts EVERY night. We had great fun, toasting over a real fire and using candles to find our way. We are already being told it is too late to save The Planet, but enforced power cuts may not be a bad idea.
Off-topic, can I apologise to Matt for my drunken ramblings on here on Friday nite. Sorry sweetheart, *blush*. Pissed wasn’t the word for it. I spent the entire evening in a stupor, watching Matt on Youtube via AppleTV. It didn’t help that the keys on my iBook kept swapping places while I was trying to type. Honest.

Hey stormy…I remember those days and nights as well,didn’t they call them “brown outs” back in the day ???lol.
I think it was about that time when water was rationed as well,I remember having to walk to the end of the street with a big bucket just so Mum could wash her hair before she went to the Bingo on a Sat night !!

Kinda makes you think how good we have it now,

Quoting maximilian:

Quoting Becca Steps:

I think it’s important to participate in these events because I’ve always felt strongly that we need to make changes, I also disagree with it, because it makes people who don’t change, feel good about themselves just because they participated for that ONE hour.

Excellent point; reminds me of something:

Around here our ambition throws an non-perishable item in a donation bin at Christmas
And it pats itself on the f***ing back because it thinks it’s done something decent

I think the nay-sayers doubting the corporate motives are quite correct, and that for many participants who haven’t fully thought things through and actually think shutting everything off is a valid way to conserve power in its own right and that it can somehow be scaled up (a suggestion that becomes untenable pretty quickly) it is a guilt alleviating exercise. However, that said, such realism shouldn’t be allowed to become paralyzing cynicism. “Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth” said George Meredith, and he’s right. Reservations aside, we have an opportunity here nonetheless to try and make the emphasis on consciousness raising. Humans gravitate towards grand gestures done infrequently, whereas more mundane daily conservation and is where the real savings lie (and with much smaller impact on our lifestyles). The truth of that is easily shown here: an hour once a year is equivalent to less than ten seconds every day. The reaction to this event should be along these lines: “Wow, if such a small thing can theoretically save so much power, what other small things can I do?”, rather than this being seen as the end itself. Many people making small change is more effective than a few people making huge ones.

There also needs to be an awareness of the complexities that may not be appreciated: biofuels whose production causes more harm than good, solar proposals that would consume more energy than they’d produce in their lifetime, hydroelectric projects that cause river habitat destruction, farmers markets where more energy is wasted with people driving there than is saved, or a net energy loss caused by a new appliance being chucked for a marginally more efficient one when the best course would be to defray the expense over time. Good intentions are insufficient; it takes understanding as well. If you care, learn, act, then share your knowledge.

EXACTLY