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Flick your switch off for Earth Hour 
Do you want to show you care about energy conservation? Simply switch off your lights on March 28 from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m., local time.

This is Earth Hour, and Saturday is the third annual worldwide event. Earth Hour is both a symbolic act and the start of a practical habit.

Millions of homes and businesses and hundreds of major landmarks will go dark for one hour to show that energy conservation is imporant and to send this message to political leaders attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December 2009...

http://green.yahoo.com/blog/greenpicks/236/flick-your-switch-off-for-earth-hour.html (http://green.yahoo.com/blog/greenpicks/236/flick-your-switch-off-for-earth-hour.html)

I shall choose to exercise my individual and private property rights, guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution (at least for the moment) and turn on every light in the house - as a political statement to show my contempt for the global warming scaremongers!!


(Did I mention it's nearly the first of April, and it's SNOWING - in TEXAS?????)

Of course.  Mmm, I don't think this story is about "global warming" (isn't the term now "global climate change" - "snowing in TX" ?  :bouncegiggle:)  Nor is it "scaremongering," but an interesting idea of unity in the pursuit of energy conservation.  Not all peoples on this planet have the rights we have to exercise, nor the resources to use... or waste. 

I am not saying that I don't belive in conservation, or being a good steward of the planet.  I am grateful to God every day that I was born an American, a land of incredible privilege . . .

But I have always been somewhat suspicious and resentful of these showy, meaningless gestures that are usually promoted by political advocacy groups whose agenda is a polar opposite of mine . . . .

and who rarely practice what they preach!

No offense intended, and karma to you for posting!

I just have a problem with environmentalists' love of grand symbolic gestures that don't really accomplish anything. People switch off their lights for an hour, some of them b***h about their neighbours who didn't, then they just carry on as usual. But they think they've done something. It's like starving yourself for a day to lose weight. Accomplishes nothing in the long run.

And it puts too much emphasis on household lights. I imagine most people's refrigerators, freezers and furnaces are going to keep right on running. They're going to cook dinner on their kitchen stove that might draw more amps than all their lights combined when it's in use. Commercial and industrial uses of electricity aren't likely to stop for an hour, street lighting has to stay on, and parking lots will still be bathed in bright, white metal halide light.

On top of that, Earth Hour is at a time of year when consumption is fairly low. Not as much heat or lights in use as in mid-winter, and not the air conditioning load of summer. People aren't doing that much by flicking the lights off, and they'll forget all about it by next week. At most, it gives people an unrealistic picture of energy consumption, where and how the most power is used, and where real long-term savings can be found.

I'm all for conservation, but let's try to come up with something practical. Environmentalists seem to either come up with ideas that are extreme and unrealistic or easy and ineffective.

Besides, we have "Earth Hour" here two or three times a year, whenever a storm knocks a tree onto the miles of power line running through forests to reach us. Often, it's two or three hours, or even a couple of days for folks out in the sticks. Earth Hour is a joke.

One point I forgot to make. For Earth Hour, people are turning off all their lights. Not just the ones in empty rooms, but also the ones they need. I don't see how that fosters good habits when it's not something people would ordinarily do. What people should learn is how much light they actually need, and try to avoid turning on more than that. Turning off all the lights for an hour doesn't necessarily teach that.