Billion people invited to switch off lights

March 26, 2009
The Empire State Building as viewed from the Rockefeller Center

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The Empire State Building as viewed from the Rockefeller Center, December 2007. Around a billion people living in the world's major cities are being invited to turn off their lights at 8:30 p.m. local time on Saturday for "Earth Hour," described as the biggest mass campaign to demand action on climate change.

Around a billion people living in the world's major cities are being invited to turn off their lights at 8:30 p.m. local time on Saturday for "Earth Hour," described as the biggest mass campaign to demand action on climate change.

The Empire State Building, the Great Pyramids of Giza, the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, the Acropolis in Athens and the Taipei 101 skyscraper in Taiwan are among the buildings whose will be switched off for an hour, the organisers said on their website (http://www.earthhour.org/)/

More than 200 buildings in Paris will be dark for an hour, including the Louvre, Notre-Dame Cathedral and the Paris Opera House, according to the French branch of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

The will be plunged into darkness for five minutes and scrap a display of flashing lights scheduled for 9:00 p.m., Paris city hall said.

was launched by WWF in 2007.

Last year's event drew a claimed participation of 370 cities in 35 countries. Last week, the organisers said that 1,189 would be taking part this year.

People are being invited to provide blogs and short video clips (http://12seconds.tv/earthhour) on the ways of spending an hour in the dark.

The campaign has been backed by the United Nations, whose secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, last week described it as a "a clear message... (for) action on " in the runup to a crucial meeting in Copenhagen.

The December conference aims at crafting a new global pact on curbing emissions of and providing help for poor countries bearing the brunt of climate change.

(c) 2009 AFP

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Soylent
Mar 26, 2009

Rank: 5 / 5 (7)
What good will that do? It won't save an iota of power because the power plants don't respond fast enough. The symbolism is also worrying, shut down civilization, save the planet; sends exactly the wrong message.
Noumenon
Mar 26, 2009

Rank: 5 / 5 (31)
Yes, but the tree huggers think man is a virus to the earth.

"Jonathon Porritt , one of Gordon Brown's leading green advisers, is to warn that Britain must drastically reduce its population if it is to build a sustainable society. [...] Each person in Britain has far more impact on the environment than those in developing countries so cutting our population is one way to reduce that impact." - Jonathon 'the idiot' Porritt

I set my calendar to turn on every light I own, ...in defiance of social engineering dressed up as pseudo-science. Climate change as caused by man and controllable, is the epitome of dumb-guy science, perfect to sell to the masses and install socialism.

How can government 'cut the population' and leave intact freedom? It can't. Social engineering; idiots with calculators, poring over social statistics to save us from our selves. That's what this is about, their naive vision of xanadu.
ArtflDgr
Mar 26, 2009

Rank: 5 / 5 (4)
at what point is the tipping point that will dink the grid?
freethinking
Mar 27, 2009

Rank: 5 / 5 (4)
Since Im cheap, Ill .just ignore this joke and not turn on any more lights, nor will I turn any off.

I think the best thing to do is ignore the idiots who think turning off their lights will do a thing. All turning off the lights mean is that you want government to be involved in your life, telling you what you can buy, and when you can buy it. When you can have light and heat and when you cannot have heat and light. The only ones, if government has its way, that wont have to reduce power and fuel consuptions will be the liberal and environmental elite (Al Gore et al).
dachpyarvile
Mar 28, 2009

Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
All lights in all rooms are on at full, all closet lights, and all 3 bathroom fans as well as an assortment of incandescent lights I rarely use in the microfiche viewer and oven light... Happy Earth-day! :)
NanoStuff
Mar 29, 2009

Rank: 5 / 5 (2)
I'll start a tire fire to compensate for the luminescence.
Rank 3.1 /5 (15 votes)
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