Energy authorities say the impact of last night's Earth Hour event was the equivalent of two large power stations being temporarily shut down.
Again, Earth Hour is/was a worldwide stand against global warming. Millions of people were expected to participate at 8 p.m. respectively. The wave of candle light began in Australia with even Sydney's Opera House going dark.
I am sure today we will hear more about the impact and I'll be updating to keep you all informed.
Update on impact: Commonwealth Edison, the electrical utility company servicing Chicago and northern Illinois -- said that about 840,000 pounds of carbon dioxide were kept out of the atmosphere during the voluntary power shutoff Saturday night, the Chicago Tribune said. [Published: 24 hours ago, 11:35 EST, March 31, 2008]
Mmmm, so my brother is having friends over for the game so he won't be participating, but I'd like for us to at least a little bit. Maybe just turn off lights and do as much as we can with a four-year-old.
Earth Hour is sweeping the globe. Companies and individuals are joining together to switch off their lights at 8 p.m. local time on March 29 for one hour - making a bold statement against climate change
I think it is a fantastic initiative and I do hope the world take it seriously. Anyone and everyone who can participate should do it.
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I am updating this post a bit this morning because I saw Treehugger posted an image of Google participating in Earth Hour. Google updates their main page for a myriad of events and I am happy to see they joined in for this one as well.
Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the United States has produced 1,150 billion tons of carbon from fossil fuels, compared to China's 310 billion tons.
William Chandler is a leading expert on energy and climate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Here is a summary of William Chandler's report:
The United States and China seemingly remain locked in a climate suicide pact, each arguing the other is the reason for inaction. U.S.-China climate cooperation is urgently needed to avert climate disaster. The current situation of the energy sectors in the United States and China offers a solution. China and the United States can set and cooperate to achieve national goals and implement enforceable measures. If this U.S.– China policy experiment works, China and the United States could develop packages of policies and measures, test them for efficacy, correct them, and share them with other countries.
One of the more interesting points in this report is in regards to how much funding is actually being put out for cleaner energy. "Official funding for clean energy cooperation between the countries amounts to only about $1 million a year. The private U.S. Energy Foundation provides twenty times more, but even this level of funding is far below the need." Of course we don't need to guess where our countries money is going, because everyone knows billions of dollars are being spent on the senseless war in Iraq. But, again, who am I to say anything...?
The recently held "Greener Gadget" competition turned out to be more of a joke than anything if you ask me.
"Greener Gadgets has partnered with Core77 to seek out design innovations for greener electronics. This design competition will engage established design firms, emerging designers, and design students to come up with new and innovative solutions to address the issues of energy, carbon footprint, health and toxicity, new materials, product lifecycle, and social development."
And when you see a toilet/washing machine combo in the competition line-up, you know things have run a muck. "Wasup" is a conceptual design integrating washing machine with toilette-flush. It suggests a sustainable water consuption by storing the wasted water in toilette-flush tank and reuse it with flushing.
I'm sorry. It might be a fantastic idea but it totally grosses me out.
Another lot of time was focused on recycling cell phones. Which I felt was something we all already knew and were participating in...plus it has nothing to do with building a greener gadget. I hope in years to come this competition is taken a little bit more seriously.
Gotta love Treehugger for being fantastic wordsmiths with up-to-date, interesting, environmental news.
At the end of April, a book contending for the longest book title ever will be released, "Seven Wonders for a Cool Planet: Everyday Things to Help Solve Global Warming." Treehugger gives us an idea on what the key issues of the book will be: transportation (the bicycle), population (the condom), fossil fuel efficiency (the ceiling fan), renewable energy (the clothesline), food production and distribution (the real tomato), resource conservation and reuse (the library book), and the information economy (the microchip).
Pardon me for being a bit immature, but I find it amusing that one of the seven wonders is the condom. In this one book you'll be reading about how both a library book and a condom are saving the planet from global warming. =o)
There you have it friends; protected sex and borrowed reading will help save the planet...hypothetically speaking.
Couple topics on the horizon for Bring Me Up's environmental section. I want to incorporate the whole green theme for St. Patrick's Day but I also wanted to mention the current protest involving kangaroos.
The plan is a scaled-down version of a proposal last year to eradicate about half of the more than 6,000 kangaroos at two military sites in Canberra. Protesters have gathered to stop this, but it's not evident what will happen yet. The plan is to shoot the animals with darts and then euthanize them. The reasoning being that an excessive amount of kangaroos are said to be the reason for the extinction of rare lizards and insects in the area.
Now, I have been trying to figure out who started the "green talk." I mean, when and who and why? Suddenly everything is green. Green cars, green jobs, green architecture, green living...just the other day I heard a commercial about green mortgages! How did that happen and why green? Why can't it be yellow or orange? There is more to the environment than green, but I digress, I cannot find the answer. It's like the chicken and the egg I suppose.
Little things go a long way. I think the most important and the easiest way to be green...is to recycle. From one person to big companies, recycling can make HUGE impacts in our world. Just last month HP announced it is using recycled plastics gathered from water bottles, recycled inkjet cartridges, and other materials to create new ink cartridges made from 100% recyclable plastics. How awesome is that?
This topic piqued my interest and so I thought I'd look into a bit further. What exactly is Hydropower Kinetic Technology?
Well, this it is the ability to produce zero emission renewable power (energy) from the movement of water. There are two types of kinetic energy involved here, one is wave based and the other is current based. To harness these energies water currents pass through a turbine and the turbine then rotates on a shaft that is connected to a generator. Make sense?
"Hydro Green Energy, LLC (HGE) is a Houston, TX-based renewable energy project developer and equipment manufacturer that designs, builds and operates hydrokinetic power systems."
The problem here is in the costs. How you can place a number on the future of the planet is beyond me, but people need to make a living. I think we all need to work together to find more cost effective ways of renewing energy. As with all great things, the cost in the beginning will probably be excessive, but don't you think after a period of time it will all have been worthwhile?
In June of 2007, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued preliminary permits for the first-ever water energy projects in the state of Mississippi. The permits provide Hydro Green the exclusive right for three years to develop projects.
Marriott International, Inc. announced today that it has been recognized for the fourth consecutive year as a recipient of the 2008 ENERGY STAR "Partner of the Year" award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), earning Marriott the distinction of being named a partner of "Sustained Excellence" for the second consecutive year.
Some of Marriott's energy-saving programs include retro-commissioning existing hotels, LEED certification for new hotels and implementing features such as: low flush toilets, energy demand response systems, fluorescent lighting and more.
It's more than just what they do in their hotels though. Marriott workers are helping people and places all over the world. They stand by the acronym S.E.R.V.E. which means Shelter and food, Environment, Readiness for hotel careers, Vitality of children, Embracing diversity and people with disabilities. How wonderful is that!?
Through a 12-year affiliation with Habitat for Humanity International, their employees and customers have built more than 300 homes in 15 countries, including the U.S., Indonesia and Mexico. Many of their employees also work with soup kitchens and food banks in their local communities.
In celebration of Environmental Awareness Month in April 2007, the company embarked in a Global Tree Planting campaign. Employees planted 3,000 trees at hotels around the world, representing their nearly 3,000 properties.
Sounds to me like I'll be frequenting Marriott's whenever I travel.
While 70 percent of the world's surface is covered by water, it is estimated that only 1 percent of those total water resources is available for human use. Currently, between 500 million and 2 billion people are living in conditions of water stress. It is estimated that this number will rise to about 5.5 billion people by 2025.
Meanwhile, experts expect water use to increase by 22 percent over the next two decades.
The mission objective: "Business Roundtable launched the S.E.E. Change (Society, Environment and the Economy) initiative in September 2005. S.E.E. Change asks America's leading companies to set challenging goals that benefit society, the environment and the economy. In essence, it is "doing well by doing good," but it also uses economic value as part of its criteria for evaluating goals and metrics. S.E.E. Change is designed to encourage market expansion; cancel inefficiencies; recruit, retain and motivate top talent; increase return on investments; and provide measurable benefits for both the company and its shareholders."
So far, these are the participating companies: Abbott Laboratories Accenture Alcoa, Inc. American Electric Power Caterpillar Inc. Citi The Coca-Cola Company Convergys Corporation The Dow Chemical Company DuPont Eastman Kodak Company Eaton Corporation Eli Lilly and Company Fannie Mae FPL Group, Inc. General Electric Company General Motors Corporation HSBC - North America Ingersoll Rand Company Limited ITT Corporation The McGraw-Hill Companies National Gypsum Company Office Depot, Inc. Owens Corning Pfizer Inc Siemens Corporation Springs Global US, Inc. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company Tenneco Weyerhaeuser Company Xerox Corporation
Whale activists aim to hurt whalers in an attempt to make a stand. Idiots. Eye for an eye doesn't work. There you are throwing bottles at whalers, yelling from boat to boat about how wrong it is to brutally kill whales. Meanwhile Free Willy is watching from under the water and saying to himself "Look at these bloody idiots. I'm just trying to come up for some bleeping air and they've got their boats bumping together, throwing bottles around. Suppose one ends up in my air hole. What are they going to do then? Kill me?"
The group said it threw more than two dozen bottles of rotten butter - which has a rancid odor - onto the Japanese ship, as well as packets with an unspecified slippery chemical onto the deck to interfere with whale flencing.
Why don't they stick out their tongues and shout "your mama" jokes while their at it. Good grief. This my friends should be an example of how NOT to make as point.
." Treehugger gives us an idea on what the key issues of the book will be: transportation (the bicycle), population (the condom), fossil fuel efficiency (the ceiling fan), renewable energy (the clothesline), food production and distribution (the real tomato), resource conservation and reuse (the library book), and the information economy (the microchip). 
