What did you do for Earth Hour? The (yawn) reality

Earth what?

Hawaii failed to even acknowledge the silly non-event this year after Mayor Hanneman urged Honolulu citizens to observe it last year and absolutely no one did, including Hanneman himself.

Well, I feel guilty. I completely spaced it off this year. In years past I turned on every light in the house. My girlfriend complains that when all the lights I’ve put up in the garage are on it looks like daylight (she’s right) yet she still wants more light in the kitchen beyond the 650 watts of halogen already installed. Next year I promise I’ll do more to emit more CO2 and consume more electrons.

“I did what I said I would do…….nothing. But I also forgot about it, too. Fortunately, if you plan to do nothing and then forget, you’re still covered:<)"
I followed your plan to a T, Bob Barker. 🙂 My results were the same.
Ian, in answer to your pointed questions, my comment above is instructive. Earth Hour is so meaningless that I forgot all about it. But I think the ongoing bad reaction to it is evidence of the obnoxiousness of AGW proponents in general and of the initial Earth Hour campaign in particular. The first year (or at least the first year it went international) it was a full court press of moral indignation. It went from being a fun idea to an obligation that proved your moral worth as a human being. But it’s so stupid, it’s hard to take the campaigners’ seriousness seriously and their “we’ve got the moral high ground attitude” is off-putting. Especially, as many believe, if it’s much ado about nothing. And don’t get me started on the whole “let’s light a bunch of candles” thing. Candles are dangerous, polluting, inefficient (how much light do you get for each unit of carbon dioxide produced?), need to be transported (which uses energy), and just epically symbolic of the ridiculousness of this whole thing. What is the point of acting completely differently for one hour in a way that has nothing to do with any possible future energy scenario, except one which might follow a complete collapse of our technological society? People here are reacting to the triumph of irrationality – and it’s no surprise if they get a little testy about it. People accuse AGW skeptics of being anti-science, when what they are in reality is anti-fantasists. They don’t buy the malarkey, or even the symbolic malarkey, that the Greens are trying to force on us. And, as we’ve learned in the past in other areas, if you give them an inch you are in danger of giving them a mile, and so we are standing firm.

It was dark, so I turned on all the lights, it was a bit chilly, so I turned on the electric heaters, I had laundry to do so I had to put on the laundry drier to make room in my washing machine. Then I went to my room and played on my electric guitar with the amp up quite loud.
Times like Earth Hour really brings home (no pun intended, really!) what a wonderful thing electricity is. I hope one day all the world gets to experience it.

Today, Sunday 27th March, I telephoned my 89 year old Mother who still lives in Luanshya in Zambia. She’d just got back from a trip down to the Kafue River, where our somewhat extended family has what we term a ‘shack’: it is, in fact, a brick-built bungalow. Apart from going fishing for Kafue Yellow-Belly bream, she’d taken paraffin and candles to our caretaker and his family. There’s no hope of ever getting any electricity supply to their location in my life-time.
They didn’t blow out any candles or lamps for this fatuous idea of Earth Hour, they ate their evening meal in the gloaming of the evening, not in the darkness of the night. Their day ends at 2000 hours as they cannot afford to burn their lighting fuel beyond that time. After 2000 hours, they rely on what meagre light they get from their fire, for which wood has to be collected every day.
And yet our caretaker counts himself to be one of the fortunate Zambians; he has a job which pays, his children (and those of his now-deceased brother and sister-in-law, both victims of AIDS) are both fed and educated and he is grateful that his wife now knows how to regulate and moderate the arrival of more children, courtesy of my Mother having had a ‘girlie-talk’ with her and introducing and supplying her with The Pill.
He has four children of his own and now has his late brother’s three children as well. Now he does not want any more children as he does not need them. His present family is guarded against malaria by both prophylactic drugs and DDT-impregnated mosquito-nets (supplied from China and re-sprayed with Chinese aerosols every month) under which he and his family sleep.
Willis Eschenbach was correct in stating that improving the life of a man and his family reduces the size of that family; I know, I have seen it work and every month I still make my own financial contribution to make sure that this state of affairs continues. I’m paying towards the up-keep of a family I haven’t seen in ten years and I’m glad that I can do so.
I celebrated Earth Hour by adding up how much I’d paid over ten or more years towards making life a trifle easier for one man’s family but regretting that I was not able to do more. I just wish that the Greenies would do the same for many more such families. It would make much more of an impact than just switching of some lights for a moment or two.

“As a HumanKind communications company dedicated to putting a brand’s purpose at the center of everything we do, we are honored to bring awareness and activation to this very special cause.”
PR people always bring a smile on my face. They are such lovely, cuddly creatures.

You can just see a tiny wiggle in the UKs energy grid at 2030 this evening if you look closely. http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bhttp:/

“Honestly we still think it’s successful, we think it’s a great program,” said Jennifer Link, a spokeswoman for Toronto Hydro, who added that cool temperatures likely had many people using more heat than this time last year.
Was I the only one who saw the irony in that quote?

Forgot all about it.
Didn’t turn on all my lights.
Then again, I didn’t turn anything off either … while I hopped in the car and ran out to the store and got back home after the whole silly thing was over.
I suppose the limo libs were gushing over each other about how wonderful they were in caring for the planet.

Ian, I understand what you’re saying, but let me ask you this. Did you really turn off your breaker during Earth Hour to save energy — or was it to save face with your neighbors so they wouldn’t tut-tut you the next day?
Did you feel any pressure from your neighbors to do as they do or suffer the scorn? If not, that’s wonderful. But in some neighborhoods things are different.
As for being offended if someone has, for example, a religious symbol on their car, I’m not. But I AM offended if someone tells me I should have one, too. Especially if they imply that I must not care about God if I don’t have a religious symbol on my car. That’s the way I see Earth Hour. I happen to conserve energy as a life-long habit. I just don’t feel the need to prove my personal conservation efforts to anyone.
You took Earth Hour as an opportunity to reflect on your own energy use and that’s great. You put the exercise to good use. (In my house we happen to have that discussion pretty much every time the electric bill arrives, as things are a bit tight.) But the way it often goes with people, Earth Hour is just as likely to be a time when people feel pressured to “fit in” with the rest of the neighborhood and cut the lights for one hour, and then they’re done conserving until next year. It’s the potential to be a meaningless gesture that elicits the mockery, in my opinion.