I heard just now on CNN, that all McDonald arches will be dimmed between 8:30 and 9:30 all over North America. Way to go, McDonald.
What about 2 of the biggest polluters of all, representing nearly 1/3 of the world population? Are India and China included in any of your numbers above?
RanchHand, you seem to have plenty of ignorance about India and china. Sure, they are up and coming countries with plenty of potential.
They do consume a lot of energy. However, that is because of their population (more than a billion each). If you look at their per capita consumption, it is nowhere near that in USA or Canada.
An American or a Canadian switching off lights for one hour saves much more energy than an Indian or a Chinese switching it off for one hour.
And I don’t know about China, but India does much more than her part. One of my Indian friends told me (unfortunately I don’t have any Chinese friends) about a phenomena called ‘load shedding’.
Load shedding is Indian term for rotating blackouts. Over most of India, they switch power off several hours every day. That includes at least one or two hours every night. He tells me every night the whole town or city goes black for an hour or two.
The reason for this is that they have to. They just cannot supply enough power for all the people; they have too many people and too little energy available. The rich people have backup power, for which they have to pay extra and is very expensive. So while during normal hours they may have power over the whole apartment (very few people there have large, energy consuming giant houses like we do here), during load shedding, perhaps one or two rooms may have power.
So what we are doing here today (at least, those who are not rabid anti-environment are doing it), Indians do it every day, for several hours.
There is plenty of ignorance in USA (and to perhaps a lesser extent in Canada) about the rest of the world. You want India to switch off power? They do that for several hours every day, and it wouldn’t surprise me if China does the same thing.
My advice to you is, make friends with people from other countries, if your finances permit, travel to other countries. You will end up with a broadened perspective, and not the narrow perspective many Americans (and Canadians) have).
Every single light bulb in my house is of the flourescent kind.
I may join the light dimmers ... but more to deny Hydro an hour of sales....
What does this scolding have to do with my question?
RanchHand, this has everything to do with the question. You asked why aren’t India and China participating in earth hour. And I gave a very satisfactory response as to why not (I notice you didn’t have any comeback for that).
Asking India or China to participate in earth hour would be like asking the man who can only afford to eat one meal a day to skip one meal a day, to see what it would feel like going without food. He does that every day and he doesn’t need any lessons in what it is like to go without food.
Similarly, it is nonsense to ask India and China to observe earth hour, they observe several earth hours every day.
"Similarly, it is nonsense to ask India and China to observe earth hour, they observe several earth hours every day."
"India and China"?? Didn't you say earlier that you "don't know about China"?
"An American or a Canadian switching off lights for one hour saves much more energy than an Indian or a Chinese switching it off for one hour."
Absolutely correct. A 60 watt bulb consumes far more electrical energy in North America than in Asia.
Must be due to the exchange rate.