The City of Evanston is joining the City of Chicago and the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus in making a statement on climate change by asking its community members to join together Saturday, March 29 to participate in Earth Hour.
Evanston residents and businesses are invited to turn off lights between 8 and 9 p.m. that day and make Earth Hour 2008 a truly regional and global event.
Beyond turning off their lights, Evanston community members are invited to take additional measures to make Earth Hour 2008 a great success, such as sign up at the Earth Hour website to become an official part of the effort and receive useful tips and tools; tell a friend about Earth Hour; and advertise Earth Hour and your support for it.
On March 29, residents in major metro areas around the world will turn off their lights for one hour to show that it’s possible to take action on global warming. Chicago was selected as the flagship region to lead the Earth Hour effort in the United States.
Last year, the first Earth Hour was held on March 31, 2007, in Sydney, Australia when 2.2 million people and 2,100 businesses turned off their lights for one hour. This massive collective effort reduced Sydney’s energy consumption by 10.2 percent for one hour, which is the equivalent effect of taking 48,000 cars off the road for one hour.
With Sydney icons like the Harbor Bridge and Opera House turning their lights off, the world took notice. Inspired by the collective effort of millions in Sydney, many major global cities and regions have joined together to create Earth Hour 2008.
Mass hysteria
It’s official. Global warming hysteria has reached critical mass. I’m not saying that the planet isn’t warming, I just think that the alarmism around it is insane. I see us all looking back in 10 years and laughing at this madness. It reminds me of, hmmm, let’s see, the hysteria in certain circles regarding the threat of Islam. It’s like we constantly need something to worry about. Take a deep breath, relax and enjoy life everybody.
Mass hysteria (cont.)
For those of you too young to remember, in the late 60’s and the 70’s we were about to enter a new “Ice Age” with mass starvation and millions dying.
We also forget the cyclical nature of warming and cooling that occurs over thousands of years. Nor do we take into account the cyclical radiation patterns of the sun.
BTW we hear nothing about the enormous amounts of methane, much worse than carbon dioxide, from eructing cows and termites.
Oh well…
If we’re all sitting in the dark —
If we’re all sitting in the dark, how will the robbers in south Evanston know which houses to break into?
Hey, maybe this is the best idea that this City Council has ever had — a way to fool the criminals who break into our houses.
Maybe for 60 minutes in Evanston, we won’t have any break-ins or burglaries because the criminals won’t want to risk breaking into a house when there are people inside sitting in the dark.
The City Council has finally displayed true genius!
It is not about global warming is true or false
This is not all about global warming. Regardless of truth about global warming, we need this type of awareness to conserve energy to protect environment and reduce pollution.
Even if global warming is myth in fact, the process to generate energy is creating some type of pollutions for sure unless all energy is coming from solar or wind power.
We often complain that gas price and energy bill is high. If you look at the cost of gas and energy in Asia and Europe, the engergy cost has been almost twice or three times more than in the US. In many of countries, it has been a common practices for everyone to reduce energy consumption by turning off computers and office/store lights when they leave office or home. It takes several flips of switches when you leave home and office everyday. If everyone does this as common practive, we can conserve a lot of energy and reduce pollution for the future generations.
How hard is it to turn off unused electricity at home and office? It sounds pretty easy right? But it is not something is it done by majority of people routinely because not everyone realizes that it takes everyone’s help to reduce energy consumption and reduce pollution. We often complain about this county’s dependency with oil. We easily point fingers to government and industry for pollution and energy consumption, but we do every little individually.
We need to think beyond global warming? It does not really matter if global warming is true or not. It is not the point. It is about our responsibility towards environment to reduce wastes and keep it clean. We all want to keep earth clean for us and our kids, don’t we.
Don’t you think this is a great way to bring awareness of what each individual can do to help environment clean, even if you do not beleive in global warming?