Actor Ed Norton, the Earth Hour 2009 U.S. Ambassador, today announced that, in addition to all citizens and businesses extinguishing lights at 8:30 last Saturday night, he has also signed an "ambassador order" calling for all clocks to move ahead one hour each night for the rest of the Obama administration.
"Each time we spring ahead an hour, we bypass 60 minutes during which vast quantities of carbon would have been belched into the atmosphere by coal-fired plants," said Norton. "Under this plan, the Earth will be spared from more than 2,800 hours worth of carbon emissions during President Obama's first two terms alone."
The ambassador said Earth Hour embassy staff members have "gone above and beyond the call of duty to set an example for the rest of the nation. We've been walking around in the dark for months now. We're committed to saving the planet from the global warming scourge which is currently masquerading as a decade-long cooling trend."
Norton, who is not related to the sewer worker of the same name in Jackie Gleason's TV show "The Honeymooners," likened the Earth Hour observance to the Civil Rights March on Selma, which coincidentally happened 44 years ago to the month.
While Earth Hour may have not packed all the symbolic punch of the Selma march, Norton said he was grateful police didn't react against participants with billy clubs, tear gas and bull whips.
"We were especially concerned about the tear gas," he said, "because it's nearly as bad for the Earth's atmosphere as carbon dioxide."
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83 comments:
Things to do for earth hour:
1. Hang Christmas lights
2. Turn on at 8:30
3. Point and laugh at the dark houses.
A dozen 1200 watt halogens facing outwards towards the neighbors.
Rush makes 50 million dollars a year making sure working people vote against their own interests.
By this time next year you won't even be able to pay the electric bill so you won't have to worry about turning extra lights on.
We participated last year and it was nice to sit and talk with no distracting devices. It also makes you aware of how much you just leave plugged in that uses electricity. It also makes me wonder about the 24/7 stores. I bet they waste a lot.
I forgot.
Go camping.
Go play in traffic.
What are humans going to do to stop the tectonic plates from shifting? Who knows what the earth will look like in a few million years? After all the dinosaurs enjoyed free reign for 160 million years, and the world looked totally different. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is too much booshia' that is out of our control.
Hell, they want to cap my emissions and yet there is a city in Russia that has so much pollution that they actually can mine the soil now as a result of the smelting process for nickel.
Quote
Pollution problems
The nickel ore is smelted on site at Norilsk. The smelting is directly responsible for severe pollution, generally acid rain and smog. By some estimates, 1 percent of the entire global emissions of sulfur dioxide comes from this one city. Heavy metal pollution near �"о�и́�"ьск is so severe that it is now economically feasible to mine the soil, as a result of acquiring high concentrations of platinum and palladium through pollution
And I'm sure the Chinese are not too much better, nor are parts of the good ol USA, so quit whining about the little .0000000000000000000000000001 of a dent I make in the grand scheme of things and worry about things that actually might matter.
We met neighbors last year. Had a good time chatting and getting to know each other under the stars.
This is a great effort to make the world realize how important it is to save the planet.
Hear, hear!!!
Yesterday, i watched a program on Discovery channel about the sequence of events unfolding when a comet would strike the Earth. To be precise, it was very frightening to see the people dying after the comet struck the Earth.
Some people have been propagating about the end of the world in 2012 based on Mayan calendar studies. Not too sure of the Mayan calendar's correctness.
I wish that the Earth be preserved at any cost.
The world ended for the Mayans about 800 years ago.
these things are symbolic, and are done to raise awareness.
It may cut a few pennies off your bill, but the generators at the power plants don't get turned off. The power just gets lost. And if you're lighting candles, you're adding CO2 to the atmosphere.
The people who turned off the lights are saving electricity, showing the world that there is a massive public demand for stopping global warming, and for science.
All of you flat-earthers really need to get a life.
A flat earther is someone who thinks the the earth is flat. The last time it was talked about was on the view when Sherrie Shepard was denying science, like the global warming deniers, and Whoopie Goldberg asked her if as well as denying evolution she also denied the world was round. Sherrie said she didn't know. She is a flat earther. If you deny science, if your world view needs lies to support it, you are a flat earther.
You forgot to mention that many of these folks believe that the Earth is only 6,000 years old and that Dinosaurs lived with Fred Flintsone:)
So, did they cut power to hospitals too?
What do YOU think?
No, of course not.
Nope, nor do they turn off traffic lights; or any other lights important to safety. It is one way to say the Earth matters and to acknowledge the connection of our energy usage.
A peaceful, thoughtful and fairly easy way to make a positive statement.
This has become popular because people have no idea how power plants and power grids work.
I have to laugh at those people holding posters. If you want to conserve, stop creating!
Laughing is always good on many levels, physically it has been proven to carry more oxygen to the organs and reduce stress.
This lights out project could be viewed as an experiment in mass consciousness, world wide, think about it, never done before where humans communicate an intent on a world wide scale, regardless of the science of electricity and opinions of skeptics.
My kids and I ran around the house turning on every light at precisely 8:29 pm EST
We turned on all the TV's too, just for good measure.
I know your kids are going to thank you when they have no food from the droughts and the coastlines are underwater and the ocean can't support life.
Because they're underwater most of the time, they're called coastlines.
:)
If that means California winds up underwater, I'm all for it.
A good fifth of all our food comes from California's huge croplands. You'd better hope they don't end up underwater. Unfortunately, drought is more probable and a potential disaster.
I'm pretty sure zackfish88 was being sarcastic. :)
Haven't you heard? Greedy wasteful energy usage is PATRIOTIC. Lol
Where I live, the electricity can go off when you least expe
ct it.
lol
For a moment there, you had me fooled!
lol
I feel gestures like this are counterproductive. I believe that the most important obstacle to garnering support for earth-friendly policies is that people resist giving up cherished aspects of their lifestyles in order to get greener.
What we ought to be doing instead is focusing on how to use less energy or emit less pollution while still enjoying the blessings of technology.
Hybrid cars are a good example of this. Solar panels and generating electricity with wind turbines are two others.
Why does the government even allow the sale of home plasma TV sets when LCD sets use much less energy
and generate much less heat?
Why does the government allow the importation of some vehicles as trucks so that they don't run afoul of CAFE standards and then allow their marketing as passenger vehicles?
Why do local governments build so few roads that vehicles burn gasoline for millions of hours per day while stuck in gridlock?
Why are there still no 150-watt reflector-flood equivalent compact fluorescent bulbs to buy in an R-40 package?
Why do local governments still build public schools with such limited window areas that they must be air conditioned, even when a bank of large windows could eliminate the need for A/C except on the hottest days?
It is unreasonable to expect ordinary people to solve the problems by "doing without" when that is the only existing strategy for making any progress and other possibilities are ignored.
I applaud the sentiment but ... dimming the lights on a weekend evening, when nearly every electrical grid is at maximum excess capacity, seems like the emptiest of empty gestures.
Get people to dim their lights, including offices, at 10 a.m. on a Monday, then you'll be doing something.
Turning off non essential OUTDOOR LIGHTING reminds us how much we WASTE ELECTRICITY TO LIGHT THE NIGHT SKY.
Look at doc's before and after pics of earth hour....still a lot of light!
Wait, doc... should I be turning my clocks ahead one hour every day now?
HE'S KIDDING!!!!!
I KNOW!
And in our town they opened up the stadium for 3+ hours (on a night when it would otherwise be closed), and invited people in for an 'awareness' gathering, er, mega-party (they were hoping for thousands - didn't happen), bands, food, the whole works.... then turned the lights off for an hour.
In our town, this is merely a publicity ploy for a few local companies and local politicians.
My daughter has the idea that if everyone on the planet painted the roof of their home or business the color white, it may help to counteract some of the effects of global warming.
Currently, we are at Solar Minimum which means just a bit less illuminance..heat and light from the Sun...note that even between Solar Minimum and Solar Maximum there is only a difference of
1/10 of 1 %.
Furthermore, Solar Astronomers say that variation in the Sun can only account for 20% of Global Warming.
Paint is so great for the environment. Earth loves it.
Burning a candle produces 17 times more carbon than burning a 60-watt lightbulb. Just thought I'd mention that.
http://enochthered.wordpress.com/2008/03/31/earth-hour-candles-and-carbon/
The problem is depletion of the natural insulation device of the Earth -- aka the Ozone Layer. The Ozone Layer shields the Earth from Ultraviolet radiation, which damages biological life in increased concentration. Depletion of the Ozone is caused by a few factors, but it is largely accelerated by carbon emissions. Whether the climate change phenomenon is *mainly* due to natural fluctuations or human cause is debatable, but nearly every scientist on either side of the argument agree that humans DO have a significant impact. The least we can do is help reduce our carbon output.
"The Earth has a fever"
I think it is a virus
...us...
I think it's population psychosis
Remember,they've been lying to us for years..raising the rates and then like everyone else
dividing the bill up into pieces like for generation and transmission etc and charging us higher rates...
The result..higher electric bills.
Light Pollution is the easiest form of pollution to control...some lights can be just turned off and other lights can be shielded or new cutoff fixtures can be grandfathered in to direct the light down where it is needed resulting in a lowering of wattage because we don't need the extra to light the night sky with.
All kinds of things happen in the environment outside your bedroom window and in the rural parts of the country out in the forested areas and such.
Light these areas up at night and you disturb them.
Light up your own bedroom too much and you will get cancer.
Basically, with combustion engines humans are emitting back into the atmosphere the CO2 that it took hundreds of millions of years for trees and diatoms to sequester from the atmosphere.
By burning the coal and gasoline that has been created by these trees and diatoms, humans are undoing a life-sustaining balance that has taken eons to stabilize.
It isn't a natural cycle. It's a highly accelerated, artificial cycle.
About the night and darkness:
The monsters come out of the closet in the darkness.
Most home invasions happen at night
along with the majority of rapes.
Murders are more prevalent in the evening.
Once the darkness has passed sit down and write a letter to your local electricity company thanking them for keeping you warm and safe from the things that go bump in the night.
The electricity companies will deserve thanks when they go to solar and wind power generation instead of pushing for more coal plants.
The whole world participated. It's a start of recognition of the problem. But it's too late.
It could be, but we have to try.
No it's not too late..
At this rate, by the time the big wigs figure out what to do we'll all be burnt to a crisp by the sun, due to the lack of ozone in the atmosphere. Like a scientist once said about nano-technology, by the time the technology is perfected to deliver nanobots into one's system to fight cancer, cancer will have been cured already.
I have the APOD picture "World at night", I hope they took another during Earth Hour.
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap081005.html
The city I live in has utilities publicly owned collectively. We do not have a profit-based system, so instead of trying to milk all they can out of us, our utility tries to help us save energy by providing free loans for solar electric and water heat, offering low cost or free weatherization, etc. It can work--you just have to make it happen as a community.
It was really nice to see how many lights in my chicago neighborhood went off at 8:30 and to watch the city skyline go dark - way to go Chicago
Why don't city skyscrapers do this every night?
It's such an indiscriminate waste to keep these office buildings lit up all night.
You've got the right idea...it's called Light Pollution and its costs us about 2 billion per year in the U.S. alone..also puts out excess carbon dioxide too.
It's the reason you can't see many stars at night.
Yes, and I am quite sure light pollution adds to the ills we face. My husband and I lived in remote parts of the country where we could see the Milky Way (Hale Bopp was breathtaking.) Then we moved into a populated area. The only way I can describe it is like our spirits were weighted down by the sheer force of energy produced by vehicles, security lights and the almost constant feeling of vibration in electromagnetic fields.
We've gotten accustomed to seeing cityscapes all lit up.
We've also gotten accustomed to NOT seeing the night sky in all its glory.
So much that 97% of us in the United States NEVER live where we can see the fantastic wonders of the Universe...
The beauty and awesomeness of The Milky Way that can cast shadows or
The Aurora Borealis or a Meteor Shower...
This is the other side of the environment that is ours too....
Yes, yet maybe just perhaps the person who re-invents free clean energy will be able to enLIGHTen us ;-)
Rush actually told his little dittohead soldiers to go against Earth Hour. These are sad little people.
When I posted Things to do for earth hour:
1. Hang Christmas lights
2. Turn on at 8:30
3. Point and laugh at the dark houses.
I was just kidding! I had no idea Rush was advocating this atrocious behavior.
Me either... I was just clowning around following adlib's comment.
Right after you two commented like that, I said:
Rush makes 50 million dollars a year making sure working people vote against their own interests.
I'm sorry, I thought you were following Rush's orders, and to be honest, I was really surprised!
Thank goodness Rush doesn't have children. He is too self-absorbed to ever worry about their future. Unfortunately, his zombie fans don't seem to care about their children's lives either.
My husband and I turned off the one or two lights we read by, lit a tiny beeswax candle and talked, reflected and prayed. Did it make a difference as far as energy consumption? Hardly. That was not the point. For us that hour was spent reverently; thinking about how we use energy, what we can do to improve our carbon footprint and praying in gratitude for the resources we have, for those who do not have the option to turn electricity on or off, and for this precious home we call Earth.
Well said.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,"
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
During WW2 if you lived near the West Coast bright lights were forbidden after a Japanese submarine
surfaced and shelled Santa Barbara. After dark the accepted lighting was limited to the equivalent of
one foot candle. Blackout curtains were used. If the block warden could see your lights you were
cited.
We have lived without electricity for a time. Earth Hour was simply to remind people all over the world
that energy is finite.
I would not like to be "powerless".
I have mixed feelings about this. I'm as pro green energy as you can get, but for some reason,this stunt rubs me the wrong way. Symbolism over substance? Sure but Symbolism is important to changing world opinion. Perhaps us technical folks don't respond to these stunts since they are data free, and we are annoyed that people are convinced by stunts instead of data.
People are moved by more than data.
It may have been a "stunt", but it was also a REQUEST (more like a demand) that the world's leaders take notice and DO something--like employing technical folks more diligently and in greater numbers to make changes more quickly, get more data, put more of the GNP of EVERY nation toward this problem.
That is no more of a meaningless "stunt" than lighting an SOS fire when you are stranded on a desert island.
To me, it felt more like the Who's down in Whoville on the speck of dust finally got enough of us together to get heard, if only for a moment.
I think energy conservation is a worthy goal, but there's something creepy about celebrating darkness. It makes me think of rejecting Enlightenment for the Dark Ages. It's the light of reason and faith being extinguished. I guess I've been reading too much history lately.
I lived through the Bush Dark Ages and all I got was...wait a sec...I didn't get a damn thing but a busted economyl
Earth Hour was a SYMBOLIC EVENT - not only to raise awareness - but to show the "powers that be" that there are HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of individuals, and tens of thousands of communities, towns, cities, governments on this Planet Earth that are AWARE and are demanding that changes start NOW!
Awareness is a beginning: School children talking about what can be done to help and planning programs and taking actions that they will continue for the rest of their lives. People coming together to plan projects and take actions. Towns and businesses becoming aware of where they are wasting resources. Everyone figuring out ways they can conserve, recycle, contribute.
Every action taken. large or small, is the opposite of doing nothing.
Earth Hour is a symbol of awareness that changes need to be made for a sustainable future.
Maybe soon the government will mandate certain hours as electricity-free.
Only then will the message be clearly implemented, and not just a symbolic gesture.
We can only hope Washington has enough sense to do this.
It's time for environmental action to have a real impact on people's lives!
I really fear for our planet and I just pray to the gods of nature, Pan and all the others that this may come to be.
That already happens.
They're called rolling black-outs.
Ask a Californian.
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