March 29, 2009

Earth Hour has been and gone for the year. Curious George wants to know: What did YOU do?
posted by tracicle 15 years ago
  • 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.