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Earth Hour – Turn your lights off at 8:30 tonight
Make a difference — Vote for the earth by turning off your lights tonight at 8:30 p.m. local time for one hour. One flick of the switch will signal your vote to care for the earth and to say no to global warming. This is a global effort — learn more at EarthHour.org.
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This is off topic, but you are always looking for pictures of nuns. Go to the Trappestine Nuns’ website in Iowa: Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey and you will see them cutting down a tree with a chainsaw!
mississippiabbey.org.
Just no. Using energy is not against nature. There are many ecologically friendly ways to generate energy, just shutting out the lights, how energy is used, is immaterial to how energy is produced and will change nothing.
hey augustine –
i agree with you in the sense that this act is purely symbolic when it comes to energy production, which is the mother of all energy issues in terms of global warming. if all our energy sources were renewable, consumption would be less of an issue (though i assume it would continue to be an issue on some level, though i am not knowledgeable enough – a great understatement – about energy to even guess at what that issues might be).
still, i love this symbolic act. i haven’t looked at the website, just read about it my local paper and now here, and i have been imagining the pictures of Earth this could produce: a rolling documentary of love for the earth as the lights go out in one time zone after another.
hopefully, what comes next is increased awareness of the depth you seem to demand, rightfully so.
there is a theory of change, Prochaska’s theory of change that lays out the stages through which we humans get there, get to the place in which our behaviors and choices are demonstrably and effectively different. check it out if you aren’t familiar: it is very hopeful, i think.
anyway, i believe we can reasonably see this action as a global step toward change of the kind you hope for , augustine: some people are not going to get any further than this action. at least not as a result of this one symbolic act. but some others are going to be ready and hungry for more, and they will move forward in the change process: they will thrilled by the visible show of love for the earth and the realization that WE created that visible show, and they will want to participate in other dynamic ways: voting by ballot, by marching, by letter campaign, by talking to strangers at the gas pump and in line at the utility company – which moves **some** others forward in the change process by which we will hopefully love our earth by protecting against its destruction.
i am always glad there are people around who are farther along in a specific process of change than i am, and today that is you, Augustine.
tonight i’ll turn out my lights and i will hope – because of your words this morning – that, in tonight’s flip of the switch – will be the seeds of my step toward the ultimate answer, which you so clearly stated.
jean
Wow, it’s that time. It’s freezing outside — windy, rainy, and verging on sleeting. I just got home from an evening with friends and I was very conscious of not turning on lights when I came home. It’s definitely an awareness-raising experience. Makes me conscious of something that I’m not always conscious about. Hope the result is good across the globe.
Even the Vatican participated in Earth Hour. Here’s another photo …. and one more.
Oh, dear. My visually-impaired sister was unaware that it was Earth Hour when she emerged from her bath into a darkened house. Let’s just say that she was none too pleased with me….
Remember that early Super Bowl when the water level dipped low in some community during half-time as everyone went to use the restroom at the same time? Was there any sort of impact felt on power consumption due to this “turn out the lights” event?
If nothing else, it was a powerful (no pun intended, honest!) witness. Imagine how much energy could be saved if these giant electronic billboards (Think Times Square, Las Vegas, Tokyo, etc.) went dark daily from, say 1-5AM when everyone should be sleeping anyway!