The Earth Hour is a global event organized by WWF (World Wildlife Fund) held on the last Saturday of March every year to create awareness on climate change and environment issues. With over a billion participants last year, Earth Hour 2011 promises to make a larger impact.
The main activity with regard to Earth Hour is the voluntary shutting down and unplugging non-essential lights and other electrical appliances for one hour. This in itself, conducted in a large scale makes a big difference in turn. Earth hour has been observed all over the world as light have been switched off in famous building all over the world.
Manipal University celebrates Earth Hour by making sure that all the unnecessary lights that are normally kept on for aesthetic or decorative purposes should be switched off on Saturday, March 26, 2011 from 8.30 pm to 9.30 pm. Requesting faculty, staff and students to cooperate and involve in this movement.
Together with everyone’s support, Earth Hour can be the first step to making our Earth a better place to live in.
Although the World Wildlife Federation, which organizes Earth Hour, certainly has good intentions, the event has no significant effect on overall electricity usage or environmental impact. So what's the use of participating ??
A good initiative which has turned into one of the "save earth" bandwagons..i Don't think this is necessary in Manipal because the government itself is blacking out 6 hrs per day on almost 3-4 days in a week.Most of the students living in hostels and apartments wont know this because the university and those flats have "very good" backup facilities which wouldn't let them know of it. If you think properly the pollution produced by these generators and the fuel spent on this , plus the embodied energies of the all the equipments etc would result in much bigger environmental setback. so to make things simple i think we should protest to have the normal electricity supplied normally.. this would actually help in making some difference….and then we can think of putting of power for one or two hours…
@Sceptic
Yeah it wont have a significant effect on overall electricity usage but It serves three purposes atleast the one I can make out
1)Soemone will light a bulb if you switch it off 🙂
2)Because of the fun part of having the whole world switching off the lights it attracts more and more people and they become aware of energy conservation as first thing they will ask after knowing about the event is – WHY ?
3) Something that can cross the border without a visa or passport.
@Anil
Yeah right infact some of the movements associated with doing away of a particular env. prob very often create it.
One as I recall was some environmental magzine which bacame so popular that many trees were chopped down just to print it so it recieved some kinda ban don remember
Other being the HOAX of man made global warming.
@Vikram Singh Tomar: It appears as though you are contradicting yourself in the to above comments.
@Sceptic: Interesting thought. Then again, every effort counts!
@Anil:Partially agree with you. Karnataka as a whole suffers atleast 6-8 Earth hours every day 😛
@Dr Vishaal Same to you. Although in the same comment.
Vikram i agree with you… it will draw attention..And thats what it is meant for…But i think (we)people living in Manipal have the best-est idea of what energy conservation is..we are all supposed to be doctors, engineers and what not here…If lights have to be put off to remind us regarding energy conservation i think our education is pointless..there is a serious lack of sensitivity in us(including me at times i agree!)….So i think people will celebrate this earth hour, as like the earth day,water day,wind day etc etc and sleep on it…its not gonna help in any way…i think the message has to be strong in some other way…we have to be punched hard to be reminded of this crisis…black outs will help in sensitive and responsive countries like japan or even US.So being realistic, i dont think this black out hour campaign will get anyone to start thinking here…..
i know i quite out of topic in here, as foreign student, the blackouts are really unexpected and worsen especially during monsoon. Any method we can know when the blackouts are going to happen in a week or a day?