I'm hoping that if you are reading this, you are well acquainted with what the title stands for. Still, for the uninitiated (poor soul), it is a campaign for unifying the people all over the world for safeguarding the future of our planet earth. The aim is to address the issue of fast saturation of our non renewable resources and global warming.
This campaign was propagated by the WWF - The World Wide fund for Nature AKA World Wildlife Fund. For more about it, here is the link... VOTE EARTH !!! http://www.earthhour.org/about/
This year, this campaign was advertised all over the world for the first time, and it was a call to the citizens of earth to switch off all their lights on Saturday, 28th march, 2009, between 8:30 to 9:30 PM Local Time. WE did. And so did many people across the globe. Though there were still people who were clueless about the whole initiative.But there were certain things, I thought, need a mention..
For one the use of candles was being much discussed on radio stations and TV. Wax too is yet another non renewable resource. And what is more, such mass use of candles too is a polluting agent !!! Then why glorify its use for the "Earth Hour" ???
Second, the issue of practicality. Do you know that in cities where electricity is supplied through nuclear power, such an initiative would actually cause immense waste? If you come to think about it, the reason is simple - Nuclear power generation requires the nuclear plant to be fed with a set mass of enriched uranium, called the "critical mass". Now the capacity of the power station is decided according to demand and when there is sudden drop in demand, the whole nuclear power generated goes waste. This means that a whole lot of nuclear waste is created, and all the nuclear energy generated in the process, gets wasted.
Flip sides always seem to haunt us. But I must say the hour that I spent with my family, in complete darkness, was pretty enlightening. Spent a good time with them, while enjoying the thunderstorm, and the sound of the rain hitting hard on our windows.I voted earth. Did you??
Cares n Prayers...
-Ritu
Yeah, we too switched off (not completely though) for the hour... N I also remember the message you sent just to confirm the same... :-)
I would accept that we didn't go into complete dark mode... BUT we made sure that all of us were in the same room so that we would need just one light (that too small CFL) n weather too was on our side to cool things that day... Switched off all other things and had a good time playing cards (which we do quite often NOW)... N it was amazing to see the news next morning saying soooo soooo much of Mega Units of Electricity were saved the same day... There are quite a lot of good people there who still love our place... Glad to know :-)
God Bless Our Earth !!!
-Aditya
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