Did Al Gore forget to turn his lights out during Earth Hour?Did you guys know that yesterday evening 8:30 to 9:30 PM marked that 'hip' thing called 'Earth Hour'? It has been, I believe, a total of 3 Earth Hour years for our family for every year that we have been here. And boy oh boy, the hype keeps on increasing about shutting-off-shutting-down for an hour supposedly to conserve our depleting resources.
Say what?
I say whoever coined this term needs a kick up their -- ya' all know what I mean here -- for it is THE most absurd of all theories for preserving/conserving our natural resources. Shutting down for an hour every year just for the sake of shutting down to prove oneself hip and attuned to world affairs is also not the right way to do it. And the way the people here publicized this whole gig while having horse races and rich parties on borrowed credit. Ah well, I guess that's hip.
How about whichever entity that coined this term makes a greater effort in educating everybody if they seriously considered the 'depletion of our resources' theory credible to mankind's existence on this planet. But, looking at this whole thing 'out of the box', I would say those same individuals have a vested interest in an alternative form of energy, the final price of which to ordinary citizens is still being worked out, as we speak, debate, and watch from the sidelines.
Judging by the way this whole scenario is unfolding, I would say we all better be prepared for a 2, 3, or 4-fold increase in our utility bills in the near future.
"Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed." — Mahatma Gandhi
P.S.: One of the reasons I admire Sheikh Zayed was for making Al-Ain greener than the rest. I doubt if his children would ever catch-up, match-up, whatever.
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10 comments:
Well said and I completely agree....
You do realize that the point of Earth Hour isn't to actually save or conserve anything?
You laugh at the whole 'hip' aspect of it, but that's precisely the point.. get people to think of conserving energy as a 'cool' thing. It's one of many ways to get the point across.
I do think that the idea of celebrating Earth Hour with events and so on is kind of silly, but again, the idea is not to save power; it's to drill the idea of saving resources into people's heads.
Well I agree the whole affair is pretty ridiculous, but its 'hip 'events' like this that are bringing 'being green' in from the fringe into the mainstream.
Things like this help to remind us that turning off lights and conserving energy aint just for penny pinching grannies and vegan hippy chicks, it's something we should all be doing.
It's stupid I know, but it seems to be necessary.
As others said before, Earth Hour's point isn't to save energy.
It's to make a point and provide numbers to prove how just 1 hour of switching off lights makes such a big difference in conserving energy.
Just look at the numbers and stop acting like you are wise. #fail
Rami:
I doubt if a once-a-year event helps create awareness especially considering the human mind and its short-term memory.
On the other hand, if the Government here is truly serious, they should consider switching the clock to summer time i.e. daylight saving scheme. This could be one way to go but please feel free to pitch in with your own ideas. Who knows, they might end up being considered by whoever (high-up) follows this blog.
Kyle, given the hellishly hot temperatures during summer, would we really want temperatures hovering above 38 C at 8 pm on a July day?
'I doubt if a once-a-year event helps create awareness especially considering the human mind and its short-term memory.
The fact that the participation of earth hour has increased steadily world-wide each year since it started goes to prove the ignorance (or is it arrogance?) in this comment.
Why scoff at and ridicule an effort to do something positive?
I don't know.. people like their rituals. Once a year events keep people thinking about things (see Christmas, national days around the world, etc).
I don't know if daylight savings time would do much in a country this close to the equator.. the variability of daylight doesn't change drastically here as the seasons (lol) change.
As a longer term suggestion re: conservation; the ewas here could consider not subsidizing power/water as they currently do, that'd be a start.
Unfortunately, though, no matter what way you spin it, the UAE has one pretty much unsolvable problem: it's a desert nation. Our natural resources (specifically water) are too low to sustain any sort of real growth, so energy must be expended to keep the machine going. No matter what the "Government" does, the footprint here will always be higher than the average.
Rami:
Subsidizing power/water? At their current billing rates, I'd hardly call them subsidized.
Tainted:
I didn't write my 19:34 response to Rami in an arrogant frame of mind. I was trying to make a point that in addition to such once-a-year events, there ought to be more such events that would help create awareness on a larger scale.
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