Well, I caved in and did the Earth Hour thing (as much as I could, see below), mostly because I thought Seattle was supposed to participate in this silly business and since I succumb rather readily to peer pressure, I didn't want to be the hold out with her light on. Plus, it was too cold and rainy to do my alternative, Earth Shower!, shenanigans. I seriously was going to have my husband take pictures of me peeing in my potato bin. It truly needs more nitrogen.
Now before you start calling me a hypocrite, I really just didn't want the Earth Hour elves who were flying overhead counting votes to put a sooty smudge on the spot where my address was on the aerial map. Actually, I was mostly inspired by Aaron and his crazy fossil fuel free weekend. I figured I could turn my lights off for an hour. Truly, this guy is what made me rethink doing the darkness thing. That, and I had nothing better to do.
So, I dutifully lit my soy and wax candles and turned off the lights. I even managed to get Emma a bandaid (via candlelight) during the deal. But, when I looked out my window, expecting to see collective darkness and thinking hmmmm, maybe I'll go for a walk and enjoy the lack of light pollution, every. single. house was lit up like a f'ing Christmas tree. And not just interior lights, but porch lights, etc.
Now, to be fair, we didn't totally participate - mostly because my son refuses to sleep with his light off (yes, I know - long story) and my husband was in the basement trying to get a project done for work so I couldn't exactly force him to work in the dark.
As you know, I think that Earth Hour is totally over hyped, but I figured at least one of the fourteen houses I can see from my windows would be participating. But, then again, they could be looking at mine and saying the same thing. That damn Crunchy still has her nightlights on!
Well, aside from getting swoony over the overly scented candles (I ran out of unscented and got a little carried away at the beginning), it went okay except for Emma arguing midway that she needed her light on too because Henry had his on. That idea got voted down. But, I do have a much greater appreciation for modern lighting now.
How was the participation in your neighborhood? Did you "vote" for or against the Earth?
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51 Crunchy Thoughts:
I was at work (restaurant), so it didn't matter if it was earth hour or just another Saturday night.
I am torn, personally, about this whole earth hour business. On the one hand, it's a superficial and laughable gesture in the face of crisis. On the other hand, it does raise awareness about that crisis. Oh, throwing water into the ocean. :(
We turned off the lights so Miss 12 could have an experience of voluntary darkness and told her stories of no indoor plumbing or electricity etc. Then grandad had to move and the lights came back on. He has Alzheimer's and it is a case of safety first. My take on earth hour is it is just one way to raise awareness. It does zilch towards solving the problems.
We turned off lights but did leave computers running. It is ok for raising awareness but thats about it really.
I'd rather do a longer term thing myself just to show what life could be like.
viv in nz
Well you know me... Earth H8er. I was with my aunt at her house, so the lights stayed on.
I was amazed that our street was totally dark. There were lights on in the nearby subdivision but not a lot. I live in a rural village near Collingwood, Ontario, Canada and Collingwood has celebrated Earth Hour yearly. It does raise awareness but in the overall scheme of things I can't see it making a significant difference. We need to reduce our carbon output by 80% in the next ten years to avert a crisis. Unless some carbon-sequestering technology is imminent I cannot see this happening - but hope springs eternal. I have to keep on trying.
We had pretty good participation on our street, but that was mainly due to the fact that we have a listserv for the block, and a reminder was sent out before hand. I had to twist hubby's arm, but even he admitted it was kinda cool seeing the lights out. I told him that some families even do entire electricity-free evenings. Sure it doesn't actually DO anything for the earth, but I'm always a sucker for symbolism.
Crunchy, you never cease to crack me up...Well, after last year's debacle I made a new plan this year. Candlelight dinner with the kids worked well till Boo picked up his placemat and nearly threw it into the candles!
Post Earth Hour celebration with my DH in darkness and with organic wine went much better!
Halifax's Earth Hour had huge speakers, blasting music, a giant panda and gasoline using flame throwers. I'm sure the kids got: Earth Hour is about giant pandas, loud music and fire. WOOT.
We did participate along with most of our rural nieghbors.
Hopefully it raises awareness of some sort. We usually do several electric free weekends at our house during the school year. Summers we go for a full week each month. Makes life intresting. We never thought about how much energy we used until we started doing this.
I didn't really look at the whole neighborhood - MAYBE the house across the street didn't have lights on, but every other house I could see did.
If ANYONE was really trying to participate - maybe it would have been an idea for them to go door to door before the event to 'sell' the idea *as a first step in awareness* of ... oh, energy conservation, or the Kyoto Treaty, or whatever. If SOMEONE had tried to make it an actual human-to-human connecting and sharing thing, maybe I'd respect it more.
Instead, I still see it as a feelgood empty gesture.
And, Gods, folks on Twitter were TWEETING about it live, and taking digital pics and posting them live. And lighting LOTS OF CANDLES to the point they complained that they were too hot. I had to work HARD to not ask them what the candles were made out of. And not ask the person tweeting by a roaring fire about the carbon output of the fire.
Fern
My house looked really beautiful all lit up with soy candles. It was kind of making me nervous with all the kids and cats, though. My husband and son walked up the street and said that they didn't see anyone else with lights out. I thought it was cool, I was thinking we could turn off the lights a few times a week! My husband turned off the tv, dear God! We had the nightlight issue, too. We watched the news later and it was cool to see the Eiffel tower go dark, and the Pyramids of Egypt.
I participated, and so did several of our neighbours, although certainly not all. I realize it's sort of futile and pointless, but I like rituals and events, and so I pretty much always do things like this.
We actually had to start early, so that my 4-year-old could join the fun. Then we left the lights and computers and such off for the whole evening. It was nice, it gave my husband and I a great chance to just sit and talk.
Some folks in our neighborhood had candles flickering as did we. We read by candlelight and snuggled on the couch.
The bonus is since fluorescent lights are so unforgiving the candlelight acts as an instant face lift, taking about 10 years off!
diana
In our neck of rurality, everyone but is was "all lights, all night". No carbon guilt in our neighborhood!
And Crunch - add nitrogen with coffee grounds! Make a "tea" out of grounds (1/2 lb per 5 gallons) or just sprinkle over layers in the compost pile. Hit up neighbors, sounds like they might be OK finding alternate ways to save carbon :D
yes we turned out light and unplugged as much as possible in the house. Then sat for our hour in the dark....looking outside like you mention to see lights, upon lights on at our nighbors....but those are the same people who don't recycle and let their trash over flow and blow away in the wind.
I was at work on the day, got home mid-earth hour so did not participate.
But I didn't feel guilty since Thursday night my area of the city was completely dark/without power for more than five hours due to high winds knocking out power. I had my candlelight filled earth hour on Thursday instead. Went to bed early too.
We had planned on participating, but we forgot and went to see Watchmen instead. Hey, all the lights at our house were off! We just weren't there!
In our defense, we had spent all day without electricity, out at our property cleaning out the camper. But we did drive there. And back.
Oh well.xessess
I couldn't convince my husband that Earth Hour would make one bit of difference...and besides, he says, we never have lights on in rooms we aren't in. So we had 2 tiny candle lights on in the windows (they are very had to reach to unplug) and the light in our family room because I was knitting, plus the TV. No one else I know participated at all and one of my neighbors was actually on local NPR saying what a stupid idea it is in the first place. God save us.
We participated. I made wax (rolled) candles with my kids the day before, and the whole event became an opportunity to talk about using electricity in general. I see your point about it not having a real effect, but it isn't meant to either - it's meant as a symbolic act, an awareness raiser, and the fact that cities and countries participate is meant to show political willingness/ability to do something that HAS real effect. It's shallow and pointless in that it has no real effect, but that's the language of politics. The real work is in our personal choices as consumers, and in our bugging our politicians. As I see it, it's perfectly possible to do both.
I think Earth Hour just gives slackers something to feel proud about...
We watched TV with the lights off......this means I can't read during the commercials so that is a major sacrifice for me :)
I'm all for Earth Hour. Yes, I KNOW it's just a publicity stunt, and I KNOW it doesn't really make a difference, and I KNOW that some people who participate therefore think they've done "their part" for the next year...but it helped me gently explain my beliefs and wishes and goals to my Husbandly One. So for me? It works.
Earth hater I must be as well as lazy person, because I hadn't read about it online.
I have carbon credits coming out of my ass so I'm not too concerned over not having my lights turned off for a an hour.
This is a call to everyone to please step outside the right vs. left paradigm. While there are important issues worth debating within this paradigm, all of them will be moot if we do not focus on a much greater issue outside this paradigm. Thomas Jefferson warned of wealth concentrating to such an extent that it threatened the state. Nowadays the media has taught us all very well to ridicule anyone who talks of central banks usurping the power of government. Well now I suppose the media will have to laugh at themselves, as many outlets from Newsweek to the Financial Times of London are openly discussing the creation of a "bank of the world" that will control economic policies of every nation. I invite you to watch this video, which details how this is currently taking place. While it focuses on our current officials' cooperation with these plans, it steps out of the typical political paradigm by highlighting the cooperation of both parties. Please do not look to politicians to protect us. Only we can protect us. And our first step must be to reach out to police and military. Without their cooperation, the global elite won't have the muscle to exercise their will of oppression. Please share this oath-keepers blog with them.
I turned off our lights, lit our one beeswax candle and sat in the mostly dark nursing my son on the couch. Once he fell asleep, I put him in his bed and my hubby and I sat on the couch talking (and coughing, cuz we're still sick). It was actually kind of nice (other than the coughing part). I did peek out one window and, just like last year, every house I saw was lit up. :P
The message that 'Earth Hour' gave the world: Yes, Environmentalists really DO want you to just sit around in the dark with your thumbs up your hineys'.
LOL I totally forgot about earth hour.. but I was fast asleep in my chair, so had no lights on anyway!
In places other than the U.S. a lot of people take Earth Hour seriously. In places other than the U.S. a lot of people take carbon emissions seriously. There may be more of a correlation between our "Oh, hah hah, Earth Hour" and our "Oh, hah hah, love my jet ski motorcycle lawn mower plasma screen jetliner SUV coal power lifestyle than we'd like to think.
Despite my misgivings, I actually did participate. Kinda. I was out to dinner with friends so my house was completely dark.
And Crunchus, I'm disappointed. Particularly so after we all chipped in to pay for the papparazzi to stake out your yard in anticipation of your special Earth Hour! celebrations. Guess I was premature in registering HalfNakedCrunchyWatersPlants.com
Damn. There's $7.50 I'll never get back.
Well, we participated, but mostly because doing something out of the ordinary makes a boring ordinary day a fun day, and the kids needed to have something fun to do.
Besides, I wouldn't want my kindergartner to go to school this week, and have someone at his pro-earth/pro-recycling school ask if he'd done it, and him having to say "no".
I just read about the Tweeting by the campfire. I'm dying. heh. But, that comment reminded me that when I went to the official site last week to see what the fuss was about, the suggested activities to do during the event included Twittering and Live Blogging.
That seemed really counter-productive.
You know, I wasn't going to do it, either, but my mom was all of a sudden all for it, and we did it--gathered around the candles and talked for an hour. Ironically, a lot of the activity was centered around battery-powered electronics--my brother was on his laptop and my mom brought out her digital camera to take pictures--but at least for me, it kick-started a habit I've been meaning to start for a while--i.e. use candles instead of electricity.
Although I don't harbor any illusions that anyone else has been just dying for the opportunity to use candles and will ever do so in the future, but you guys are right--it raises awareness, and I wouldn't denigrate that.
We turned off the main power and were totally electricity-free. We read ghost stories by candlelight and had a blast.
Doesn't the cumulative effect of all those individual houses and cities over time have some benefit?
I was with my spinning group, so we did have the lights on. But on the bright side, a half-dozen people were not at home with their individual lights on ...
This is funny! My son's name is Henry and he cannot sleep with his light off either! :0)
To my shame, I totally forgot ! I'm wondering if it has been done in France (obviously at a different hour...). Well, this week-end I was with my parents, so I guess at least, we had only one lighted house instead of two...
I chose to use the time to write up a blog post and a facebook note to encourage my friends to be more earth friendly every day instead of just one hour. In addition, I came up with 5 things I was going to start doing during the year that would make more of a difference than shutting off my computer for an hour (which is the only thing I had going during this time).
Honestly, people here had no Idea what I was talking about, which is fine. I convinced a few people to participate and while I will never quell the bustle that is St. Thomas, VI, I had fun.
We turned it all off, except fridge and a clock or two. I used an led reading light and read a few chapters of Pride and Prejudice aloud to husband. The cat raced around like a maniac (for a 14 yo feline, it was quite a to do).
I think we were the only participating apartment in our whole area code.
I think it is a wonderful, symbolic gesture to show that we care about the earth. It isn't meant to be a solution in itself. I believe it is simply meant to raise awareness, and create solidarity. Honestly...can it HURT to participate???
I have participated for the past two years, and I feel good about it. I have even turned that day into a "No Computer" day. It is a good excuse to unplug and get back to basics (game night with the family, by candlelight...). And goodness knows, it certainly makes you grateful for all that we have.
I'm very discouraged by the many boos and hisses I hear every year. No one claims that Earth Hour will be the one solution to save us from greenhouse gases. It is a symbolic gesture, and again, I say, what is wrong with that?
I don't see a difference between this and sit-ins, rallies, marches, protests, etc. There is no guarantee that any of those things will change the world, but it is worth it for like-minded individuals to make their feelings heard. This is the same idea, as far as I'm concerned. It is just a rally that stretches, quietly, across the globe.
Y.W. - could it HURT to participate? Well, yes. I asked folks who were participating what they did during it. They lit candles based on parafin, using MORE petroleum products and putting MORE carbon in the atmostsphere than they would have using incandescent bulbs and oil or gas or even coal based fuels, let alone compact florescent bulbs. They lit fires in fireplaces and fire pits - again, really LARGE carbon footprints.
Fern
I was at a concert.... No earth hour for me.
Fireplaces are inefficient and highly polluting but if they are burning wood, that's not fossil fuels and so the carbon footprint would be calculated quite differently than for the candles.
I personally participated and it appeared that quite of few of my neighbors had their lights off too, but they tend to be like that every night thankfully.
If it makes you feel any better I heard Al Gore didn't participate either. But you know he has a big house so maybe if he only had 10,000 sq feet of his house lit instead of the usual 20,000 sq ft then thats like 5 normal houses right there! ;)
That might not be true about Al, but you know to make you feel better!
Risa, maybe you and I have a different definition of "carbon footprint"? Mine is total amount of carbon one puts into the atmosphere - source is immaterial, because global warming by greenhouse gases doesn't care what the source is. What is YOUR definition of "carbon footprint"?
risa : Is it true fireplaces are highly pollutive ? Never heard of that ! And I was dreaming about a fireplace to be able to heat my home with sustainable source like wood...
We participated for the evening. I agree that it only works for awareness but I think if it did that well, we're making a difference! I wish we all could try and do it every night or at least one night a week...
@Lilith
Traditional open fireplaces are very polluting and very inefficient. Comforting and beautiful, however. And the pyro in me loves nothing more than poking around in a red hot fire. That's some serious fun!
There are some fireplace designs and things like rocket stoves that greatly increase efficiency and cut down on pollution by regulating air flow to create more complete combustion.
Still ... from an historical perspective England switched from wood to coal because they had cut down all their forests to burn for heating and cooking fuel. At first, coal was seen as the poor man's wood, but soon enough even the wealthy couldn't afford to burn wood. So exactly how sustainable wood is as a fuel is debatable -- certainly it isn't for the general population.
And let's not forget that although many consider wood to have a better carbon footprint, we use a lot of oil to cut down and move and split all that wood. Unless you do it the old fashioned way with hand saws and axes.
Okaaaaayyy... No fireplace then... So what are the best heating solutions ?
Lilith, good woodstoves (esp those with catalytic converters) and wood burning masonry hearths are more energy efficient and less polluting than open fireplaces.
Good insulation and passive solar design are also important and efficient.
Packing 20 people into a room and having them dance works REALLY well, too. My kind of heating!
Fern
I am a sometimes lurker on your site as I learn more and more about green living. Let me start by expressing how much I appreciate what I am reading, and the level of though and research, as well as honesty I see here.
As for Earth Hour - I gotta tell you. I didn't do it. And the reason I didn't do it, was because I was so disheartened by what I read here. I shouldn't have let it get to me, but the message I took away was "it doesn't matter because it's too little to make a difference anyway."
Now, intellectually and from, what for me is a theological standpoint, I know that's not true. Little things do matter. All the big changes in the world are composed of little ones. And slowly but surely I am making changes in my own life and my household. I secretly switched some of my cleaning supplies to vinegar solutions, we've started a bokashi bucket, I'm now using a diva cup (and loving it) and I foresee these changes slowly growing.
So, as someone who is new to all this, please remember and remind your other readers, that not all of us are at the same place on the "green living scale" and each difference, however small, multiplied over many people, adds up.
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