Earth Hour
I have been planning to attend a facebook event called “Earth Hour” for quite some time now, but it wasn’t until today that I realized the actual scope of the event. Although 1 of the 2 people I know of who read this blog is sure to already know this, I’ll explain it anyway:
On March 29, 2008, as many people as can be contacted will turn off all non-essential power from 8:00 – 9:00 PM, their local time. This event is being sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund (the cool environmental group with the panda mascot). This happened in Australia sometime this morning, and apparently was a huge hit. They ended the event with government-sponsored fireworks in Sydney.
To support the event, Google turned their homepage black:
Funny thing is, according to some studies, LCD screens actually use slightly more energy to display black. Oops! (Side note: someone wants to keep google like this: Blackle)
According to wikipedia, the energy saved during this hour is between 2% and 10% of the normal electricity usage. Of course, this data is based on Sydney’s past celebrations – this is the first year the event has gone global.
I like this idea. I think it’s cool that a group can orchestrate such a global response for an environmental cause. I’d really like to see the extent of participation, and, more importantly, the impact on world energy consumption.
However, I have some reservations. Events like this are increasing rapidly (don’t buy gas on this day, don’t buy gas from these companies, etc.), but they always seem to be a lot more symbolic than practical. It’s great that we can mobilize millions of like-minded people at once, so let’s try mobilizing them to do something that actually has a reasonable impact.
On a similar note, researchers just proved that corn-based ethanol actually hurts the environment more than it helps it from cleaner burning, due to all the forests that had to be clear-cut to grow corn. I think there’s still merit to killing our oil dependence so our society doesn’t implode, but we shouldn’t stop looking for new fuels so our planet doesn’t implode.
So, I leave you with two questions: what will you be doing this earth hour, and how do you think we could mobilize the green population to more effect? I will be attending a comedy show.
Tags: environment
