Earth Hour 2010
This Saturday at 8:30PM is Earth Hour, so my lights, consoles and computers will be staying off. It's a very small sacrifice. When it comes to the scale of anthropogenic climate change I think this must have a rather small direct effect in the scheme of things. But it is also a valuable symbol, and I consider that important. It's unfortunate that raising awareness remains such an important part of this issue.
The power use involved in gaming is something I think about fairly often. The number of consoles and gadgets I use has increased over time. Recently I've started turning non-essential things off at the wall when I'm not using them, but I still wonder about the impact of spending so much time on electronic entertainment.
There are far worse things I could be doing -- I don't own a car, and it's extremely unusual for me to utilise air travel. But that doesn't mean my own habits are not worth thinking about.
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I have always found myself rather torn over Earth Hour.
I'm all for raising awareness, but I always suspect that people think that switching everything off for an hour will actually have some effect. It will not - the amount of electricity that's pumped out of our power plants will not be reduced over that hour. It's just not feasible to shut things down and start them up again!
Which is why electricity is cheaper at night time. A lot of electricity just goes to waste at night time because there's nowhere for it to go and no way for it to be stored.
So awareness is good. But I guess I wish more people were aware of the above. Turning everything off at once won't help at all (and may be counter-productive if you're burning candles during that hour!) it's if everyone can reduce their overall power consumption during peak times then the power stations would be able to reduce their output and less energy would be wasted during off peak times. Of course then we'd have even more chaos during those really really hot days when everyone turns on their air-conditioners at once and then we get blackouts :/
@ephant -- I definitely take your point. And I do worry that events such as Earth Hour may have more to do with reducing guilt than actually having a real impact.
I suppose I'm trying to use it as a reminder to examine my own habits, as well as the general awareness-raising. I do think the more people who get involved the stronger the symbol that people do actually care about the issue and want to see action.
Meh. While I like the idea of Earth Hour as something we should consider from time to time to encourage us to use less electricity, most people I know don't really take it seriously. It seems like such a token thing to do.
But how will I hear my friends band when they're playing?