March 29, 2009
Earth Hour has been and gone for the year. Curious George wants to know: What did YOU do?
We were staying at my sisters, so we all piled into the station wagon and went down the road to a drive-in movie night my parents had organised as a fundraiser for a local club. The only light was the projector (let's not talk about the carbon cost of getting to the movie, though).
(Heh, and the movie was Cars.)
I shut the computer down, turned all the lights out and tried to read in the light of a torch lamp. Gave up and watched
Max Payne. Somehow, it seemed like a penance.
Most of the neighbours had lights on, but I noticed I could see a few more stars than usual.
i made sure every light in the house was on, watched tv and i tried to burp and fart extra often.
I saved a baby king snake from my cat.
My kids saw the Milky Way for the first time too, and can now identify Orion by his belt. However, this is pretty common in NZ; they were just up and outside past their bedtime.
homunculus: what
What what?
Snakes what?
I was just slightly agape at your comment, what with snakes and cats in one place and all.
wife turned off all the lights... dog spent the next hour chasing cats 'cuz I couldn't see what dog was doing....
Yep, it's spring so there are baby king snakes around (and lots of lizards). King snakes are good snakes; they're not poisonous and they eat rodents and other snakes, and they're pretty easy to handle. I've had to save two baby snakes from my cat in the past week.
I've "saved" 80 kilowatt hours by line-drying my laundry this month.
Has anyone seen anything quantitative on how much demand for electricity
was reduced by Earth Hour?
Huh! Never even heard about it. Spent the whole day outside with horses, so didn't use any 'lectric.
Must just be outta the news loop.
*wanders off*
I thought about turning off all the lights and the TV and driving to the pub but that seemed counter-productive so I just turned off the lights but left the TV on.
The season finale of Heartbeat was was on, after all.
Looks as if we saved 1.1%.
I turned off everything except for my bedside lamp, which has a 9-watt CFL bulb, so that I could read. Here in France we hadn't yet gone to daylight savings time (that was yesterday, heh), so it was pitch dark outside and I didn't want to burn a candle since that time is peak kitty "RUN AROUND FAST JUMP ON CURTAINS!! TWIRL POUNCE MEOW RUN PULL STUFF OFF TABLE SCRATCH CLAMBER UP SHELVES WHEEEE!!" and I'm pretty sure a candle wouldn't have survived.
I broke out my stash of whup ass CFCs (cloroflorocarbon) cans and sprayed it all in the air--each molecule of CFC can destroy tens of thousands of ozone molecules, so bye bye polar ice caps. Take that Al "The Chiller" Gore.
We went out that evening with my wife's sister to a lovely Indian restaurant and sat by the fireplace. It was so dark inside the waiter provided a small flashlight so we could read our menus.
I watched the NYC skyline turn off very, very, slowly... and then shortly thereafter succumbed to a veil of fog.
UnMonoBlanco, you don't know your greenhouse gass from an ozone hole.
But you will.
The Big Picture has a set of images up.
Click to see them fade.
I looted my neighbours, seeing as it was dark, and all.
I didn't do anything.
Then again, I compost our kitchen waste, recycle the hell out of everything I can fit in the bins (and the #5 they won't take, I truck to a local place that does), my computer is set to hibernate automatically if I am not using it, every bulb in our house is a CFL, and our outdoor Christmas lights (which are still up) are solar powered LEDs.
So, every hour in my house is Earth Hour, I guess.
I am embarrassed to admit I forgot all about Earth Hour, even with a friend reminding me.
Err, what I did was forget about it entirely. I compost all my kitchen waste with a worm box, I just got baby chicks to eventually produce truly local eggs, and the power goes out for several hours at least once a month. Does that count?
And what about those who don't live on the Earth? I think they should have their own hour too.
I had to work that day till 10pm, so I couldn't do anything. I suggested turning off the lights at one level of the library, but for safety reasons that was vetoed.
On the other hand, since I was working, I wasn't using any electricity at home.
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