So tonight is Earth Hour. its a widely publicized event thats been gaining popularity over the past few years. At first, I loved the idea of this: turning everyones lights off for an hour and enjoying an hour of a much darker sky, maybe even some more stars! Its like that episode of Hey Arnold! when arnold wanted to see halleys comet, but all the lights in the city made it too bright, so he got everyone to turn off their lights so they could see the comet. In truth though, earth hour is barely a blip. Even the most optimistic estimates of energy savings during the one hour blackout puts it at the level of stopping China's carbon output for a total of 45 seconds. Not really much at all. However, it does send a message: light pollution is changing our environment. Animals aren't able to sleep at night near lit roadways and high-density development, and some lights stay on for nobody, wasting electricity through the night. I hope people take earth hour and bring it into their own lives, turning their lights off more often then theyre not being used, and being conscious of energy usage. Together, we can make the world brighter by turning off the lights :)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/03/27/3174771.htm?site=sydney
24 comments:
incredible picture, even if we should save energy
Very cool, hopefully one day we can get China to participate, then it will have a real impact.
I practice this anyway because I prefer a darker atmosphere. I rarely have more than one light on, and during the day its usually not even that.
IT be cool if people actually did it. I haven't seen anyone do it around where I live.
Hmmm i see what you did there!
"Animals aren't able to sleep at night near lit roadways" I think that's probably a good thing in China, it stops them eating them!
It'd be awesome to actually see the stars.
Energy conservation is unreachable at the moment because all the higher ups don't want to give up their charmed life.
interesting shit
i usually participate in Earth hour this year. But i think i missed it.
I dunno, I think its at least a start, if people cant even turn off their electricity for an hour, we are pretty fucked.
I just turn off lights that aren't being used. All the time. I'm not sitting in the dark for an hour because people can't understand that...
I like these ideas. I try to impose blackouts on myself every now and then, just to quiet things down
I've got some pretty cool pictures of earth hour
I love everything that's green and makes sense, and this does. Glad it's getting more popular )
Who knows what can really be done with this :(
I'll be doing it in spirit, but not actually doing it in reality.
Maybe if more corporations and big businesses started doing it, it'd have more of an effect. The majority of energy consumption isn't from the general population in their homes :/
I turn all my lights. I think I was the only person in my street that did it. I´m glad I did.
I remember that episode, i miss Hey Arnold! I try to remember to do this but i forget every time...
Sweet picture. Would be interesting to see a picture from space!
Ha. All my lights were out anyway... It was like, I don't know, the wee hours of the morning for me. Heh.
As a fan of stargazing, astronomy and just beautiful skies, I have to agree with this. I have to drive like an hour to get far away from the towns and their disruptive yellowish glow.
It's easy to forget what the stars look like living in a city. All the light pollution makes you forget they even exist at times.
If you want a great view, you need a clear night in the mountains or deserts many many miles away from civilization.
Have you ever seen the Milky Way? I have, it's astounding.
And while the hour itself will have little impact, the stop to consider energy conservation is the real idea here.
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