<!--emo&:ind--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/india.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='india.gif' /><!--endemo--> <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'><span style='font-family:Geneva'>Earth Hour: An hour of difference
29 Mar 2008, 0051 hrs IST,INDIATIMES NEWS NETWORK
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NEW DELHI: When the world switches off for Earth Hour between 8 and 9 pm on March 29, India may remain illuminated. As of today no Indian city has officially joined the campaign to black out to show that India too is in the crusade to reduce global warming. This can, of course, change if Indians, collectively and individually, will otherwise.
The Times of India urges its readers, especially in India, to join in the campaign. It is a small starting step, but a one that may eventually make the difference between survival and extinction. (Individuals can sign up to participate on the Earth Hour site.)
The Earth Hour, which was started by World Wildlife Fund in Sydney in 2007, is a way to spread the message that if the world switches off for an hour daily, carbon emissions can be reduced by 5 per cent annually. Andy Ridley, executive director of Earth Hour, says through the campaign, cities and communities will demonstrate "their leadership and commitment to finding solutions for climate change".
Currently, the initiative will be observed in 35 nations and across 370 cities, towns and councils worldwide. So far, 240,000 people have signed their support of the event. Celebrities such as singer-songwriter Nelly Furtado and the band Fall Out Boy have pledged to turn out their lights, as have the Phoenix Suns and Chicago Cubs. "We're asking for the whole hour ... and for cities around the world it is whenever that time rolls around," World Wildlife Fund communications manager Adam Harper says.
An estimated 2.2 million Sydney residents took part in the first Earth Hour last year, and it shaved 10.2 per cent off the city's energy consumption for the hour. Other cities are expected to follow Sydney into the campaign this year, and they include Christchurch, Bangkok, Seoul, Dubai, Antarctica's Casey Base, Manila, Copenhagen, Rome, Dublin, Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco and Mexico City.
"One of the goals of Earth Hour is to have participants commit to longer-term benefits, such as replacing older lights bulbs throughout their homes with highly efficient compact fluorescents, and to commit to reducing energy consumption daily," says Carter Roberts, president and CEO of World Wildlife Fund.
Past Record
2008 would be the second year in succession when a clutch of cities in the world would be taking the initiative of using no electricty for an hour. Earth Hour was first started in Sydney when on March 31, 2007, 2.2 million people and 2100 Sydney business establishments turned off their lights for an hour.
With Sydney landmarks such as Harbour Bridge and Opera House going into pitch darkness and unique events such as weddings being conducted in candlelight, the world took notice. Inspired by the collective effort of millions of Sydneysiders, many major cities have joined the Earth Hour campaign in 2008, turning a symbolic event into a worldwide movement.
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It will be interesting to see how much of an impact the 1 h switching off has on the energy consumption trends in the future. The US leaves lights on on all corridors of buildings at night. That is about 1 tubelight atfer every 2 meters of corridor space (conservatively speaking). And then the obligatory 2 tubelights per room is left on all night (the rest of the 3-6 tubelights per room are switched off).
I struggle to switch off every damn light in my house for even 10 minutes of non-use.
I cannot even imagine the gargantuan energy wastage that occurs in the Land of the Naive, the home of the Pretenders (USA). These people behave as if they have a God-given right to wrap, re-wrap, package, and re-package every piece of food/every commodity; and use up fantastic amounts of paper, cardboard, and plastic for every little thing.
As usual, they will make a big song and dance about some token energy saving measure and then get on with their wasteful lives with renewed vigour...
To me, most of this environmental activism is to push their own agenda into people's mind. Once this solidly gets into people's mind, many things can be pushed ahead in the name of saving earth (such as carbon tax, carbon credit) and it is the developing countries who will suffer due to their reduced margins.
I would do many things on my own like preventing wastage of power & water at home, but won't follow what these global organizers ask people to do.
Personally I would suggest, try to make this campaign a flop. <!--emo&:flush--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/Flush.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='Flush.gif' /><!--endemo-->
03-29-2008, 04:35 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-29-2008, 04:54 PM by Husky.)
<!--QuoteBegin-ashyam+Mar 29 2008, 11:19 AM-->QUOTE(ashyam @ Mar 29 2008, 11:19 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->I would do many things on my own like preventing wastage of power & water at home[right][snapback]80131[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I'm willing to wager that most people on IF and their relatives already try to save water, electricity (switching off lights when not used, for instance), use savings lamps, recycle old clothing and try to take cloth-bags from home so that they can avoid plastic bags from stores. Even I've been doing most of these things since childhood. Meanwhile, a Karnatakan friend doesn't even approve of wasting kitchen paper (but where I live that's from local sustainable resources; though I haven't found much cause to use a lot of it). Similarly, the Taoist Buddhists I know won't let the tap drip - ever; they strongly disapprove of water wastage.
People were doing all this before the western world started screaming 'global warming' as if it was a sudden apocalypse now. From where did I learn to be conscious of use and wastage? Not from Al Gore - who won whatever it was he won again for noticing the environment or something - nor from the media, nor those self-crowned environmentalists off on a crusade to make the world cleaner and greener as if they suddenly discovered the world was meant to be green and was anything but clean.
Instead, I learnt it from the usual source (the same I guess from where all Asian, native American and other 'non-progressive unsaved' people learn it from): Grandparents. Parents. Uncles and aunts. (Using common sense would get one there as well, I think.)
They don't ever waste water. They never ever waste food. Hindus always used recyclable leaves to eat on (I regularly do so, when back home in India). But nowadays washable, reusable stainless steel plates are also there and in use.
Even after diapers, pads/tampons and other plasticky stuff started proliferating in India, aunts still refused to use anything but what they had always used (they always say No Thank You to the ladies who come by to sell these things).
Anything the family didn't finish eating, or whatever was accidentally dropped on the ground for instance, we put outside for the roaming goats or other animals to eat. Oddly enough, I continue that today, though there are no goats where I am, of course - the birds eat it all up instead. (Don't panic, it's vegetarian and it isn't anything high-cholesterol. Just a few rice grains and stuff. So the birds are all fine.) The amount of rubbish my family puts outside is no more than a quarter of the weekly allowance - we wait for two weeks before putting out a bag. All our neighbours here (and they have fewer members per household) go the full quota each week.
Come to think of it, the last time I accompanied relatives in India on a shopping-for-a-wedding spree, I remember my aunt carrying a cloth-bag to ensure that saree-storekeepers don't dunk plastic bags on her. She doesn't like junk cluttering her home.
So I don't think we need western (or western-minded Indian) environmentalists telling us how to behave or what to do. Instead, here's something they could do to help: they can stop selling their junk in our countries (L'Oreal products, yuck McDonalds food and other unwanted stuff, for instance). Sadly, Indian industry has already started manufacturing lots of waste paper bags in imitation of western 'progress', but hopefully more of the younger generation of Dharmics will inherit the mind-set of their ancestors and discourage its use and production altogether.
Similarly, we don't need PETA threatening us to "become vegetarians or else". I understand that they only recently graduated from the christoview of the world where humans could do whatever to animals; and now they want to force others to follow the path they've just discovered and chosen for themselves. (I always wonder why PETA invaded India...) But really, we don't need their sermons, since Dharmics have always known about ethical treatment of animals, because we don't think of animals as less than us, even if not all Dharmics are vegetarians.
And it's because we're Dharmic that we don't childishly threaten/lecture/whine to others to follow our way. PETA and environmentalists haven't graduated to that yet (or, in PETA's case, even beyond the concept of mere "ethical treatment" of animals). It's the eternal christoimperialist manner to push half-digested 'discoveries' onto others as if they've just re-invented the circular wheel.
Us 'uncivilised' people will continue to plod along, saving water, saving electricity, not wasting food, doing our bit to sensibly manage the waste we acquire/accumulate. Oh yeah, and we'll continue to consider animals as no less than humans ... ("Oooh how unsalvageably heathen! Jehojeebusvallah will smite ..." - well, he's always smiting left and right according to the babble, so what else is new).
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Personally I would suggest, try to make this campaign a flop.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I don't care about this or other lame campaigns either. (Christo missionary organisation Oxfam recently stole Gandhi's "Be the Change you wish to see in the world" and are now suddenly campaigning for the environment with their "Be The Change" TM © thing. Guess they found they weren't converting enough people with their food bribes and threats of hell, and realised they needed a sympathetic environmental angle. Nice attempt, trying to give christoism a green image, but it's too late when the whole world already knows the babble is what inspired the great christian enterprise to turn the world into a wasteland. 'Steward of the animals' is the best it could come up with... Oh yeah, I see: because humans have really proven to be great "stewards" of nature <!--emo&:blink:--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='blink.gif' /><!--endemo--> One really wonders how nature ever managed before it invented humanity! I mean, when the christian wasn't there to steward it.)
Ignoring the silly campaigns and bully-activism, am hoping that in general people continue to live consciously, avoiding wastefulness and keeping an eye out for ways to be kinder to our world and to better its present predicament. After all, what is mere earth to environmentalists is Bhuma Devi to us (MahaVishnu's wife), just as India is BharatMata.
03-29-2008, 06:46 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-29-2008, 06:47 PM by Bharatvarsh.)
PETA is a bunch of wankers, their concept is "total animal liberation", that means you can't have any pets, you let out all your dogs onto the streets etc. They are against animal research but their 2nd in command hypocritically takes insulin everyday which was discovered based on animal research and claims she needs to do it because then "she can fight for animals".
I don't trust a lot of this environmentalist nonsense, they often try to push agendas onto the 3rd world that they themselves are not willing to follow and try to keep the rest of the world dirt poor. There are a lot of commie assholes who infiltrated these orgs after USSR and Berlin wall fell and where there is commies, there is bs.
Look at Al Gore, he uses more energy in a week than you or I do in months but thats the asshole who keeps telling us to save, wtf?
These same nuts were saying the world was gonna starve in the 70s based on that "population bomb", morons like Lester Brown and Paul Ehrlich made a lot of money through scaremongering, Ehrlich even specifically said this about Bharat in his book:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Paul Ehrlich can barely suppress a shudder of revulsion, in The Population Bomb, at the locust-like masses swarming around his taxi during a ride through Delhi: "My wife and daughter and I were returning to our hotel in an ancient taxi...The seats were hopping with fleas...The streets seemed alive with people. People eating, people washing, people sleeping. People visiting, arguing, and screaming. People thrusting their hands through the taxi window, begging. People defecating and urinating. People clinging to buses. People herding animals. People, people, people, people."
http://www.churchofeuthanasia.org/press/gettingit.html<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
He claimed millions were going to starve in India and there is nothing we can do about it.
And then of course Norman Borlaug came along with his dreaded Green Revolution and disproved all these fearmongering nuts, of course nowadays you will see fancy and loaded Oxford educated "green" activists like Vandana Shiva question the benefits of Green Revolution and attribute nothing but evil to it.
People who are always telling the rest of the world doomsday scenarios and making money are morons, the real heroes are people who try to do something about it like Dr. Borlaug.
ps: Vandana Shiva is also virulently anti Hindu, check this book of hers:
http://books.google.com/books?id=yoj2SmTZI...lmBkQWbxtriZlBA
Type Gujarat or Hindutva in the search box to see the kind of anti Hindu bs she spews.
<!--QuoteBegin-ashyam+Mar 29 2008, 11:19 AM-->QUOTE(ashyam @ Mar 29 2008, 11:19 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->To me, most of this environmental activism is to push their own agenda into people's mind. Once this solidly gets into people's mind, many things can be pushed ahead in the name of saving earth (such as carbon tax, carbon credit) and it is the developing countries who will suffer due to their reduced margins.
I would do many things on my own like preventing wastage of power & water at home, but won't follow what these global organizers ask people to do.
Personally I would suggest, try to make this campaign a flop. <!--emo&:flush--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/Flush.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='Flush.gif' /><!--endemo-->
[right][snapback]80131[/snapback][/right]
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree with you, this should be flop.
These PETA , moveon type of guys are worst abusers. Actually they are unemployed or unemployable type of crowd who loves name in media.
PETA guys are behind Obama, but Obama's wife is displaying here expansive mink coat.
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