Saturday, March 28, 2009

Earth Hour

The official Earth Hour website says it is at 8:30 p.m. tonight. I have heard and read different times, such as 7:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. I don't know where all the confusion comes from, but I am going to go dark at 8:30 for an hour.

It won't be that big a deal for me anyway, because I am a stickler for turning off lights! I think that comes from my childhood. Mom would come home from her night job, and the first thing she would say is "every light in the house is on...I told you..." A few times there would be variations that included some cuss words.

I have three brothers and a sister, so we always played the blame game. It's easy to stay out of trouble, when you have several brothers and a sister to blame LOL!

Seriously though, I think Earth Hour is a great idea. The first place I think of that definitely needs to go dark for an hour is the Las Vegas strip! Let me take that a step further and say the whole city of Las Vegas. A close second would be Times Square. Some other obvious places that could use some bulb cooling off would be Shanghai and Tokyo. Okay, all large cities should shut some lights off (IMHO).

Until you've lived in both large cities and a rural area, you really don't realize just how lit up the sky itself is above a large metropolitan area! If you ever get the chance, take a drive from Las Vegas to Laughlin and you will be shocked at just how dark it is in the desert between those two places! It is pitch dark during the entire drive, except for one tiny pit stop called Searchlight.

The title link takes you to the Earth Hour website.

So are you, or did you participate in Earth Hour?

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9 comments:

HalfCrazy said...

Our household participated, of course! Most of the houses on my neighborhood (althought I didn't see it, my brother did) have their lights all turned off. Some people might have no idea about it at all LOL.

I live in the capital of my country, we waste electricity the most so we are probably the best participants in Earth Hour LOL. Even Broadcasting companies (and Malls!) turned off their lights for a full hour and some of them might have extended.

I agree with you about turning their lights off in Vegas and NYC. I wonder if they're going to participate?

John said...

WTG HalfCrazy! Glad to hear it! I know at least one resort in Vegas went dark--Flamingo Hilton (Donny Osmond claims it was his idea) and probably others. NYC participated too. Again to what degree, I don't know. Over ten major cities here were going to participate.

These days, Vegas needs more than a some pretty lights to get peoples' money!

HalfCrazy said...

Wow good to know!

I have read an article in Yahoo News about Vegas and NY too but no info yet about the number too but I'm sure they reached a billion. Omg it was so touching LOL.

Haha, ain't Vegas one of the deserted cities in the recession?

John said...

I lived in Las Vegas in 93-94, and I miss it, so I will admit I read their newspaper online almost everyday...it says the whole strip and most off strip resorts did go dark.

I was last there in August...what a rip off it has become! Everything way over priced and not many winners.

Yes, you are correct...people aren't moving there anymore, they are leaving in droves...LV has one of the highest unemployment rates in the U.S. and is like 2nd in the # of foreclosures. Right now there are over 30,000 vacant homes or apartments! Economy is really bad there right now. I hope it turns around soon!

I signed up on blogcatalog! Thank you for the tip! Wow it is quite a site! Can't wait to see what happens!

Blonde Goddess said...

We participated.
It was nice too. I lit some candles and we sat and talked as a family for an hour...(no small feat when you've got tree teens in the house.)

Shey said...

My hubby and I participated too and had fun playing scrabble by candlelight.

I am totally with you on turning off lights when not in use. And also in turning off those lights in metropolitan cities that uses too much of it, you won't even see stars anymore.

John said...

@Blonde Goddess, glad to hear your family turned out the lights too! I even unplugged my computer for several hours!

We did pretty much the same thing, sat around talking (no kids though, I sure miss my daughter).

We were mesmerized the whole time looking out the windows in awe as the rain turned to snow and it kept snowing harder and harder! I kept saying, "no way! I can't believe it! It's almost April, etc."

I was up almost all night just to see the last (hopefully) snow storm at least for a few months! By morning we had about 2 inches! Amazingly, the sun came out this afternoon and all the snow melted!

John said...

@Shey, Isn't it great to know so many people participated! You are so lucky to have a husband to play scrabble with...and by candle light--how romantic! I haven't played scrabble in ages!

My stepmother and I used to play scrabble almost everyday after school, when I was in high school! In this electronic age, my daughter wouldn't hardly ever play scrabble with me (but she managed to lose most of the tiles).

Oh, and thanks for being a follower now! I love roses and your pic is beautiful...it would be even without the roses though!

HalfCrazy said...

I remember reading a novel and a guy saying, "Vegas is called the Sin City for nothing. No one should live there. It's corrupt... blah blah" I forgot the other things he said LOL.

I really hope this recession ends soon! It's affecting the Global Economy because most of the businesses are in the US!

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