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Earth Power

World Cities Go Dark For 'Earth Hour' Climate Campaign (afp.com) 141

Posted by EditorDavid from the dark-matters dept.
An anonymous reader quotes the AFP: Earth Hour, which started in Australia in 2007, is being observed by millions of supporters in 187 countries, who are turning off their lights at 8.30pm local time in what organisers describe as the world's "largest grassroots movement for climate change"... In Paris, the Eiffel Tower plunged into darkness as President Emmanuel Macron urged people to join in and "show you are willing to join the fight for nature". "The time for denial is long past. We are losing not only our battle against climate change, but also our battle against the collapse of biodiversity," he said on Twitter. Moscow's Red Square also fell dark and the Russian section of the International Space Station dipped its lights, the Ria Novisti news agency said... UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the event "comes at a time of huge pressure on people and planet alike. Resources and ecosystems across the world are under assault. Earth hour is an opportunity to show our resolve to change."
Other landmarks "going dark" include the Empire State Building in New York and the Sydney Opera House, as well as the harbour skylines of Hong Kong and Singapore.
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World Cities Go Dark For 'Earth Hour' Climate Campaign More

World Cities Go Dark For 'Earth Hour' Climate Campaign

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  • No thanks (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24, 2018 @06:36PM (#56320673)

    I think I will mine for Bitcoin instead. This should completely negate all the power Paris is saving.

  • Looked outside. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by EzInKy ( 115248 ) on Saturday March 24, 2018 @06:46PM (#56320727)

    All my cities lights are still on. Doesn't seem to be an "all" thing to me.

  • Complete idiocy. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Chas ( 5144 ) on Saturday March 24, 2018 @06:48PM (#56320735) Homepage Journal

    "Let's not do/buy "X" on this day/hour/etc."

    Yay! Accomplishes NOTHING.

    All they're doing is stress testing the grid's ability to cope with increased demand when everything comes back up.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ELCouz ( 1338259 )
      Agree... this prove nothing and create a potential grid instability/failure.

      But, oh boy, tree huggers are happy right now!

      • As if the grid operators would not read newspapers and new in advance about it ...
        I guess the switch off the lights thing did not even drop power demand by 10%

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      The important people who get to travel from international city to another important city can then
      enjoy the virtue signalling about what they made their city do.
      That their city was part of a global effort to go back to the dark ages. To make nations be like some third world nation.
      Just the first step in getting large groups of people political active.
      Finding out who can sway politics and make a city not support a normal service.
      The first event is for nature, something that is easy to get support for.

    • Accomplishes NOTHING.

      Except producing one of the best and most wide spread global awareness campaigns to energy wasting in history.

      It's like people chaining themselves in front of an oil pipeline construction. They don't do it because they think they have any chance of preventing the construction, they do it because their message will be in the evening news.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Charcharodon ( 611187 )
        So the result was we sent in armed police and ran all the hippies off. Unfortunately for the local wildlife they polluted the whole area with human waste (shit and piss), and left literally tons of plastic garbage laying about. Oh and delayed construction enough that trains carrying said oil, that could have been sent through the pipeline instead, derailed not once, not twice, but twelve times dumping a halve a million gallons of crude oil on the ground.

        Good job hippies. You did the exact opposite of w

        • I didn't say their end game had forethought, just that they were hoping to be in the news. And they were.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        re "they do it because their message will be in the evening news.."
        Really smart people make computer art about the news. Evening news get turned into fake news. All from the comfort of a computer making a funny picture.
        The evening news is not trusted and the pipeline construction is approved.
        The advisors have moved to get past any larger Vietnam war style protests getting "news" at any one location.
        The protest that thought it had the optics to get on the news got turned into a funny meme online about

      • Accomplishes NOTHING.

        Except producing one of the best and most wide spread global awareness campaigns to energy wasting in history.

        By wasting more energy in various more-harmful manners, don't forget that.

        There's also the research that shows that people tend to feel that their part has been done by participating in an awareness campaign--which means that once people are generally aware of the problem, they do more harm than good, especially if done with no particular goal than to raise awareness, the equivalent of a fire department that doesn't do a thing more than let everybody know that a place is on fire. (I've had at least one run

        • By wasting more energy in various more-harmful manners, don't forget that.

          Reminds me of the people driving their cars to reach protests against oil. The short term doesn't need to make sense when the long term goal is in mind.

          especially if done with no particular goal than to raise awareness

          That I agree with. A world of protests have been horrible for the environment long term. But raising awareness about how much we waste electricity for no reason isn't done without a particular goal. It's truly jarring to see the number of commerical buildings that leave all their lights on when absolutely no one is in the office. Whether by earth hour or oth

    • You have it all backward!

      All they're doing is stress testing the grid's ability to cope with increased demand when everything comes back up.

      No, they are stressing the grids ability to cope with a sudden drop in demand when everything is switched off.

      Sigh, do you guys never learn: the demand changes go both ways?

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by Chas ( 5144 )

        Funny. There are already myriad ways of coping. The most draconian of all being dumping power to ground.

        So, a campaign devoted to stopping the wasting of power is inciting...the wasting of power...

        BRAVO!

    • I wish slashdot had a thumbs-up button!

  • Just so y'know, I open up the doors, crank up the HV or AC and the stereo, and turn ON every light I have for an hour. I wave at people as they go by.

    The only problem is that to turn the fridge light ON I have to leave the fridge door open, and my drinks get warm and the ice melts. But, the sacrifices are worth it.

    OOOOH! That's today, and RSN -- March 24, 2018, 8:30 PM. Gotta go get my 8-tracks ready.

  • Just like the California drought... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DatbeDank ( 4580343 ) on Saturday March 24, 2018 @06:56PM (#56320769)

    This is something that will only be forced on poor people. Excuse me while I turn on every electronic device I can possibly get my hands on!

  • Anti-intellectual garbage (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RightwingNutjob ( 1302813 ) on Saturday March 24, 2018 @07:21PM (#56320861)
    The great triumph of the human intellect has been the taming of nature to suit us. Darkness and cold were the first beasts we slayed.

    • The great triumph of nature will be our suffering as the result of our attempts to tame it.

      • The great triumph of nature will be our suffering as the result of our attempts to tame it.

        I'm sure we would all chuckle if we had a full view of the creature comforts you're enjoying that allow you the time and comfort to freely make silly little posts like this.

        If you're truly concerned we're burdening poor Mother Earth too much with our meaningless existence, the Bloodhound Gang wrote a song just for you [youtube.com].

        • I didn't say I wasn't a total hypocrite, or even that I am a greenie (I'm not, I reduce my electricity usage only to reduce my monthly bill). Just pointing out that human superiority isn't a thing. Nature will fuck us right up, and me doing my bit* isn't going to change a damn thing.

          *And this thinking is the reason why we as a species will fail.

          **Posted from my energy saving iPad... while my desktop computer sits across the room idling away without even the screen off.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Political leaders like the dark and cold. Its their natural habitat.
      Now we all have to join them in the cold and dark for some reason.

  • Like it's 700AD!!! Woo-Hoo!!!

  • Symbols don't matter as much as actions (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Saturday March 24, 2018 @07:32PM (#56320895) Homepage
    This is a tiny blip in total energy use. Long-term changes, both in personal behavior and systemic society aspects needs to occur. Individuals can use more public transit, eat less meat, not keep the heat up really high in winters, etc. But personal changes are not enough. If one wants to help directly with helping reducing CO2 production then donating to solar and wind charities is the best bet. For solar, the best two seem to be Everybody Solar https://www.everybodysolar.org/ [everybodysolar.org] (which gets solar panels for non-profits like museums and homeless shelters), and the Solar Electric Light Fund https://self.org/ [self.org] which gets solar panels for people in developing countries. I'm not 100% sure on an ideal charity for wind, but one good one is the New England Wind Fund https://www.massenergy.org/the-wind-fund [massenergy.org] . Finally, if one wants to directly reduce CO2 in the short-term, then the best bet is simply directly donating to Cool Earth https://www.coolearth.org/ [coolearth.org]. In terms of maximum reduction of CO2 per a dollar, Cool Earth is unambiguously the best so if one wants to engage in carbon offsets that's best. A typical American lifestyle can offset their entire yearly carbon budget for about $500 (this won't be the case indefinitely though, as if Cool Earth gets more than about another order of magnitude of funding, the diminishing marginal returns will be start mattering).

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I live in Germany, I donate more than half my income to the senseless idiots who built massive windpark in Nord Sea without connecting it to the grid.We all still had to pay for virtual electricity (there grid had to buy it and we all paid for it trough the green levy on electricity). We also have legally enforced insulation of our houses so think that they rot if we don't keep windows open. Then there is the diesel nonsense - falsified (not done according to law) measurements may make diesel go away in ci

      • I could spend a large amount of time talking about how Germany has screwed up badly on climate issues including things you don't mention (e.g. turning off their nuclear plants, not putting in any grid storage when they went for renewables, etc.) But note that none of the things I suggested donating to are run by the German government, or a government in general.

  • And the winner is.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by blindseer ( 891256 ) <blindseer@noSPAm.earthlink.net> on Saturday March 24, 2018 @07:49PM (#56320939)

    NORTH KOREA!

    We proudly award North Korea the winner of the Earth Hour Challenge. They've shown great efforts in caring for the environment for not just sending the entire nation into darkness for an hour (except Dear Leader's palace grounds) but by doing so for the entirety of Earth Day! ... and the year. For much of the last century really.

    Next year we'll take applications for the nation that has shown the lowest carbon footprint growth for the last 50 years. This will be to mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day coming in 2020. We know who is in the front running, don't you? Let's see who else can revert their nation into the stone age by then. We hear that North Korea is already making plans for their victory by building rockets for a massive fireworks display that no doubt will send shockwaves around the world!

    Come on America! We can't let North Korea show us how things are done! We need to lower our carbon footprint too. USA! USA! USA!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You joke but there are plenty of people mental enough in the US to support NK style "climate action", we call them "democrats"!

  • Idiot Europeans,

    I switched over to LED lighting over 5 years ago and before that fluorescent lighting nearly 15 years ago.

    Turning off the lights in my household does diddly squat to my electrical consumption.

    Thank God too, I have two women in my household, you would think their fingers were all broken with their inability to turn off lights. Still they'd have to leave a light on for 24 hours a day for a month straight before I would notice it on the bill. About 90 hours straight before it adds 1 pen

  • Instead, celebrate "Human Achievement Hour" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Saturday March 24, 2018 @08:46PM (#56321131)

    As an alternative to virtue signaling tonight, how how celebrating something that has made a difference in the lives of billions - Human Achievement Hour [twitter.com].

    The fact that across the world we have less disease, poverty, and hunger than ever before - not to mention lifespans increasing in even the poorest of countries.

    As George Carlin said, the Earth will be fine no matter what we do. Celebrate the fact that we have collectively helped humans to live better, which will in the end lead to a better environment than any useless gesture ever will - it's only when humans feel content and safe they feel free to turn their gaze away from survival and towards conservation.

    • "when humans feel content and safe they feel free to turn their gaze away from survival and towards conservation"
      Yet country after country is electing populist governments BECAUSE they do not feel safe, they feel squeezed and everything else will take a back seat until that squeeze eases up

    • One can celebrate the myriad human achievements and the progress of civilization and still recognize that our current energy consumption patterns are producing massive amounts of CO2 and methane which threaten the long-term well-being of civilization.

  • "The time for denial is long past. We are losing not only our battle against climate change, but also our battle against the collapse of biodiversity,"

    Seriously, the issue is not denial of this, but the fact that so many nations continue to grow their CO2. As long as nations are allowed to build out new coal plants, this will continue to get worse. It is only once stopping coal and then nat gas (which gives a fraction of the CO2 that coal does), that we will see CO2 go downwards.

  • This is an un-Murican thing to do. To think of the consequences of one's actions and to reduce consumption. Those traitors!

  • The worlds cities should do something meaningful like turn off half the streetlights all the time. The reduction in light pollution would be an added bonus.

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