Earth Hour -- Meaningless Gesture

[linuxdoctor]

Last year on 31 March 2007 in Sidney, Austrailia, the World Wildlife Fund (Australia) and the Sydney Morning Herald promoted what they called "Earth Hour." The idea behind the event was to demonstrate that "even you" can do something about the environment. To that end they proposed that on the aforementioned date between the hours of 7:30 and 8:30PM everybody was to stop doing everything that would produce carbon emissions. This included everything from driving cars to using electricity. It presume it also meant that nobody was to make a bowel movement since doing that expels all sorts of noxious carbon based fumes.

According to the backers their one hour emission free binge reduced the electricity consumption by about 10%. According to critics, the drop in consumption only indicated that many people shifted their consumption to other time periods before or after the scheduled power-off. Some even challenged the 10% figure suggesting that, for various reasons, the actual reduction was anywhere between 2 and 6 percent. Since statistical margins for error are typically in the 2 or 3 percent range, the critics say, the actual power reduction could be anywhere from zero to three or four percent. Overall, the critics say, the effect was negligible and the so-called Earth Hour boils down to being a meaningless gesture.

Well meaningless gestures are the stuff of which politicians live and breathe. So successfully meaningless was the first Earth Hour that Sidney is doing it again. This year it's going to be on 29 March 2008 between 8 and 9PM. Not satisfied with being the only city doing this meaningless gesture, the Lord Mayor of Sydney has helped spread the meaning deprived occasion to about two dozen cities world wide. Included in the list of cities getting involved in Earth Hour is my home town, Ottawa, Canada whose scandal plagued mayor, Larry O'Brien, advocated the idea.

Ottawa's mayor is no stranger to meaningless gestures. Only last year after being roundly criticized for comparing panhandlers to pigeons and that people shouldn't be feeding either he instituted a programme called "Kindness Metres" where people could donate money to charities that helped the homeless into special parking metres rather then giving money directly to the "human pigeons" who would, according to O'Brien, would only use them on drugs and liquor.

So Ottawa's mayor jumped with both feet into this one. In the end it really may do some good. The "Kindness Metres" do bring in some money for those who help the homeless and the Earth Hour just might reduce power consumption a tiny bit. In both cases it isn't enough and whatever good does come of it will probably be lost in other ways.

So, Earth Hour gets my vote for the meaningless gesture award. I mean, it would get by vote if there was such an award. I'm thinking of starting one up. It's the award given to the politician, actor, businessman or other person in the news whose actions are deemed to be useless, too little too late, vapid, self aggrandizing or otherwise devoid of substance , significance or integrity during the previous year.

Anybody else thing there should be such an award? If so , chime up with your nominations. Any of you with an artistic temperment please feel free to submit your designs for the Meaningless Gesture Award statue, logo and letterhead.
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[Myst]

Sydney is spelt with a y, just so you know

Anyhow, I believe this has been spread to Adelaide as well (Adelaide being the capital of South Australia - that noone has every heard of).

I personally don't think it has a lot of significance, but I guess it does make people more aware of what is happening. Sure, you may have reduced carbon emissions by a few percent in a day, but as you say, that's nothing.

Perhaps it shows people how easy it is to do something like that. If we have a sustained drop of 3 or 4 percent, because people realise how easy it is to, say, turn off a light, then that will be worthwhile.

I'd like to read where you found those figures from though. I doubt there would be too much of this shifting of power consumption, as at that time of the day, what would you do at other times? Maybe shower, that's about it?

The the major drive, as I understand it, is that lights are to be turned off, generally at places which are unoccupied, such as city offices which are closed down for the day. There has to be some sort of drop due to that

But yeah, of course, it's not the action itself, but what it teaches people.

[exsanguination]

Well I actually live in Sydney, and we took part in the whole earth hour thing.

We were throwing a party (not an earth hour part, just happened to be on that day) and we shut down everything for an hour and ate dinner during the whole outage. People made stupid remarks about the absurdity of it all, but really by the time we had finished dinner it was time to turn on the lights again. Except we didn't do that, just kept drinking wine and sitting in the dark in the backyard.

I find it pointless if its a once a year thing and immediately after everyone turns everything back on thus creating a spike in demand. If people took note of the actual motivation behind earth hour. The idea isn't that its a once a year thing, its to promote people into reducing their energy consumption every single day. Its just a good way to market the idea i guess.

[LP-SolidRaven]

The only thing this thing did is probably give the guys at a power plant to do some maintenance work on a generator or two. That's what they achieved
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[raqqauniv]

thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaank you
goooooooooo on

[Xtreme $niper]

[coralvalley]

I had honestly never heard about Earth Hour until a few days ago. I can see why someone would want to partake in such a gesture and even though it was something that was completely new to me, I can say that while not everyone observes it, an hour really is not a long time out of a day considering. There are times when a great many of us are simply not really doing much of anything and it could easily be spent having an hour to work on other things that don't involve all the processes that you would be avoiding for an hour. It really isn't all that much I suppose. I can see the reason for the idea behind it in it's own way.

[Pie32]

Here in Atlanta, we did Earth Hour (although I didn't notice any businesses that were open at the time participating). I just hung out in a room with the lights off with my friends. Then once Earth Hour had ended, we continued the spirit of things by leaving the lights off while we played Brawl into the night.
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[mellymoo]

My friend and I continued in our quest to complete Infinity II, by candlelight for an hour!

you have no idea how difficult it is to differentiate betweek pink and orange, by the light of a naked flame!

needless to say, we're not going to be millionaires, just yet!

I see google changed it's home page to black (they turned the lights out on it!). Didn't make an iota of difference to the power consumption on your laptop/pc, but i suppose it brought Earth Hour to the attention of internet surfers who probably hadn't heard anything about it.

[SE13]

I did go with the idea, and everything non-essential was turned off for the hour, mostly meaning that most things were not turned on again until the following morning. Certainly we made the most of the early night

My oldest son actually asked me first thing the following morning how much we had saved, and how much of The World was saved by our efforts.
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[West_ham_hammer]

I was at work staring out at the lights of the ever expanding Heathrow Airport. And watching the planes land in quick succession of each other.

Also watching the endless containers of British airways passengers luggage driving around. One day they will catch up with the passengers!
Now that is what I call saving the planet, don't send the luggage, in turn not using as much fuel and energy.

Smart thinking BA

You crazy fool.