lørdag, marts 29, 2008

Time to turn off the lights

This was first brought to my attention a month ago, and amazingly enough, I was actually reminded of it today. It will be interesting to see if enough turn off their lights tonight, from 8 til 9, to make a difference for anyone looking out the window. I suspect that in my little suburb, we'll be alone in having a candle-lit apartment. But I hope I'm wrong. You can find out more at http://www.earthhour.org/.

I only have a small handful of you who actually read this blog, but are any of you doing this? I'd appreciate knowing how it went in your area. The buzz in my household is a recent newspaper article, the idea of which is that the candles everyone will be using will give off more CO2 than that saved by not using electric lights, but I'm going for the symbolism of the relative darkness anyway, and will hold firm that we'll try it out here.

10 kommentarer:

jdbauer sagde ...

wow. all the lights are off, but I completely forgot. I don't see neighbors' lights on. Shit does the light from my screen count. Is it all electrical things or just lights??? I need to read up!

EKinDK sagde ...

We're totally candle-lit right now, 6 minutes past 9pm. Just looked out the window, and there seems to be some kind of gathering/march -- people circling the castle with flaming torches. Embarrassed to admit the first I'd heard of this was about an hour ago! Is it dark where you are?

Devil Mood sagde ...

I didn't do it. Shame on me.
My Dad was cooking, we could hardly turn off everything then.
I'm afraid this has gone completely unnoticed here, no mention in the papers whatsoever.

My next door neighbours did it though (because they had just gone away for the weekend) lol

Anyway, I know that there were big innitiatives in many cities of the civilized world and I was happy.

Admin sagde ...

i'm doing this in three and a half hours. candles and a book...

Anonym sagde ...

We're totally doing it (the lights thing, not "IT" it - although with the lights off, it is kind of romant--) but it's not for another few hours here. I'll report back when it's over!

N sagde ...

I didn't know what it was until I read the news today. I was at work at 8 pm and the airport didn't turn off the lights...

Scholiast sagde ...

I didn't, and I hadn't really planned to. Being Rufus' girl I'm going to do it June 21st instead...

Care to join us?

kimananda sagde ...

Jonathan, the overall platform is to cut down on electricity use (like not leaving things on standby, but actually turning them off), but this initiative was just the lights. Not to worry.

EK, that's cool to know things are happening. Here in my little suburb, there seemed to be about as many lights as usual. I did hear that Copenhagen and Odense did a bit more officially, but I haven't seen any photos or anything.

Ms. Mood, I would say to do it next time. I didn't think that Thor would do it, as he and a friend were here surfing on the computer, and he was the one who told me about the co2 use from candles. But when the time came, they were really into it.

Vesper, candles and a book is definitely the way to go. Did you choose a specific candlelight friendly book?

Roro, how did it go? I get the idea that a lot of people in Vancouver were doing this.

Bluefish, I can understand the airport keeping the lights on. Probably a good thing, I'd think.

Scholiast, that sounds even cooler. We'll see if I can remember to do anything post-baby!

erin sagde ...

Stats are in now. There was 2.7%ish reduction in power usage across BC. The amount was about 7% in the higher income neighbourhoods around Vancouver, close to 0% in my parents' neighbourhood because the working class Bible belt couldn't care less.

The town of Hartley Bay was 100% out. The town council shut off the generator.

kimananda sagde ...

That's cool to see some official stats. Some of my students today told me that the lights out made no noticable difference in the greater Copenhagen area, but I haven't looked for any confirmation of this yet.