Saturday, March 29, 2008

EarthHour

Has anyone ever heard of this before?? I hadn't. But apparently today March 29th from 8-9pm major cities around the world will be turning off the lights! It started in Sydney Australia last year, and has now gone global.....

sydney, australia 2007

Now, I'm not real big on the whole "go green" movement, i know shame on me right? But anyway, I think this is a great idea. I mean how hard could it be, we're just talkin about the lights. What a perfect time for a candle lit dinner, to take a shower or a bath with candles, you can even watch a movie or those basketball games still, just turn off all the lights:) It's really amazing if you think about it. Major cities all over the world are turning off their lights for just an hour and saving tons and tons of energy....Sydney Austrailia, Vietnam, China, Bangkok Thailand, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, the Phillipines, have or will be participating. Even right here at home in San Fransisco the Golden Gate Bridge's lights will go out among other things, and then later tonight Chicago will follow California's lead as they too will flip the switch.


Check out how much Earth is lit up at night! Thats a LOT of energy!

*In that ONE HOUR Bangkok already saved 73.34 megawatts of electricity which would have produced 45.8 tons of Carbon Dioxide. If you're like me "megawatts" means nothing to you so here's a little perspective....

  • 73.34 Megawatts of electricity is equal to a little more than 2001 Gallons of Gas

  • Todays gas prices in the US ranged from $2.57-$4.38, that puts that 1Hour of lights out, saving some where between $5142.57 and $8764.38. Wow!

  • This intrigued me so to further your understanding.......

  • Using my car (chevy cobalt) at roughly 24 miles per gallon, 2001 Gallons gets me in the ballpark of 48,024 miles.

  • Stay with me.... it takes (via google maps) exactly 78.9 miles to get from our front door to my mom and dad's driveway. A total of 157.8 miles to drive for a trip home and back minimum, or 6.575 gallons of gas.

  • The amount of energy in 73.34 MW/h would allow me to drive home and back about 304.335 times! OR Every single weekend for the next 5.85 YEARS!!!

  • If you still don't get it here's one last try.....the 73.34 MW saved in that one hour equivalent to 2001 gallons of gas, would allow me to drive from our house here in Louisville, KY to Juno, Alaska AND back home again.....8 times!
  • for one hour people. one. hour.

And you thought you were just saving a little dough everytime you flip those lights off when leaving a room! :)

It's not that we don't care about good ol' momma earth it's just not something that we think about directly affecting us everyday-the energy "crisis" that is. So this is my small way of helping out without going out and purchasing a trendy lil' hybrid, or toting my cloth grocery bags to the store, or unplugging every single appliance in my house when not in use. This is easy, and I ain't gonna lie sometimes I'm lazy and easy just works. If you want more information you can read about Earth Hour on the CNN site, and even watch video of the Opera House and other areas in Sydney turning their lights out from a birds eye view!

Here's more info on Earth Hour here in the US (they even have a site with ideas for what to do for that one hour.)

Have fun in the dark :) It's just an hour!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hello! New to this site and I found your blog. Great post, "IMAGINE" what we could do if we all just pitched in. Saw your in med school. Good luck with that. Enjoying reading your blogs. Thanks!

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