Earth Hour Isn't

Wednesday, March 25, 2009


This is why we moved our capital back to Manila and never ever thought of bringing it back to Quezon City again. For some reason, QC has managed to maintain its status quo of amazingly retarded mayors whose brain activity might be likened to that of your seasoned rootcrop.

I have had it with you people and your fucking sheepherd approach towards environmentalism.

The only way I can think switching off streetlights on roads for an hour as practical is with the goal of having cars crash against each other, reducing the number of mechanical pollutants in our roads. Also, the activity of robbing people with icepicks gets promoted because of the darkness, and we all know that profession has zero carbon footprinting.

Switch off our lights to vote earth? What the heck does that even mean? We switch off our lights every day. I switch off more than one light. Does that make me a flying voter? If you think about it, our country has been celebrating Earth hours on a regular basis every other night and have been doing it since Fidel Ramos screwed up our power grid harder than GMA is screwing GSIS. Every after a bad typhoon we celebrate earth days for weeks on end (if you live in cavite). Are we better off? The goal of the Earth Hour is to convince governments to start passing legislations that will help reduce our carbon footprint.

NEWS FLASH FUCKERS. We already have legislations against smoke belching and many other things that pollute our environment.

Guess where they're at now. (Click here to see the biggest problem of these laws)

And then there's the idea that by switching off our lights, we save the world "Energy" like somehow, if we all suddenly stopped using our lights, the magical coal-fired plants will store all that electricity in magical elven batteries for later use. It doesn't work that way. Electricity production is done in real time and unless the sever reduction of power for 1 hour is anticipated, the same amount of coal will burn. And will the power plants change rates? Keep dreaming. The effort in changing production levels just for an hour only to revert back isn't even WORTH IT.

There are better ways of improving how we deal with the environment than bandwagoning over some silly activity that ultimately consumes more nature points in the number of prints, ads, on-air plugging and other material requirements than an entire city would in a month. And for what? To convince governments to act on what they already know they should act on.

You know what works too? Walk up to the politicians and tell them what you want.

Same banana, minus the overwhelming hypocrisy or just plain naivety.

Earth Hour isn't for people who already dim to begin with.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why am I feeling so much negativity for the RP government here? :D

melancholicdreamer said...

uhh,,i just happened to pass by your blog cuz i was searching for a review in Baler when i came thru this post...

well first, originally, those *fucking* mayors or govt officials never really came up with this idea,... its those environmentalist groups i guess...
secondly, not all lights are switched off LITERALLY. maybe just the lights in the City Hall or somethin.. like why the hell should they shut down the lights in the streets when its the important thing motorists need most and i bet they dont want any road accidents during Earth hour.

i know that these govt officials are using these kinds of ads or whatever to make the most of it for their campaign for the coming elections but do please ignore those rich fcuking officials and pay a close attention to the "real" advertisement and see if that ad makes sense and will help us.

REDKINOKO said...

Thanks for dropping by. I do know what Earth Hour is, and I know the mayors didn't come up with it.

But that don't mean I agree with Earth Hour more.

For what ever purpose Earth Hour exists, it's more of a ceremonial statement than a practical one, which is useless if people don't follow through. Earth hour has its merits, but I don't really feel like it should be given any more value than what it's really worth.

If it's about energy being saved during that hour, unless the powerplants around manila anticipate a drop in power, the same amount of fuel will be burn and the same amount of carbon will enter the atmosphere. And since chances are our powerplants wont, what might happen is our national grid will just underload in some parts and possibly operate more inefficiently for the next few hours following earth hour.... Read More

I am for environmentalism and yes global warming is taking its toll. I'm sure there are far more effective ways people can help the environment in a more consistent way.

I think that's something we both can agree on

Grim Pilgrim said...

Hi Redkinoko,
Though enmity towards politicians in general is perhaps obvious in your post, I more or less share your skepticism on politicians in a larger sense. The points you raised against Earth Hour are pretty much eye openers, especially to people who don't understand how turning of lights essentially benefit the environment. An hour of no lights may not really do much about power generation.
However, if you permit me, I will provide a counter point-of-view:
- The political and bureaucratic 'BS' aside, it does indeed provide a modern connection to the 'Bayanihan spirit'. Though I'm usually more pessimistic than optimistic, I do see a glimmer of hope for us (Filipinos) and as a species (humans). EH can also instill a more environment-friendly way of living, to make more people more aware of the connection of their power consumption and the environment. Apparently, it can even bring the church (though I'm not really comfortable with that thought) along the energy saving bandwagon.
- According to news reports (see below) we Filipinos supposedly saved 80 MWh (MegaWatt-Hour) from last year's Earth Hour effort. Your explanation of how energy is produced provides a good general introduction on electricity production. It would then seem that this 80 MWh saving could all just be virtual/imaginary, and not of any real life significance/importance to the environment. Or is it? Changing generation/transmission/distribution (and hence overall cost of electricity) over an hour's worth of turned-off light is close to impossible, but doing so could help the environment in more ways than affecting power g/t/d directly. In Power Systems class, the g/t/d of electricity is effective and helpful to people and the environment depending on the layout (radial or interconnected) and the hardware, software, peopleware, etc. administering the system.
Finally, unless somebody does the math, including more research on Philippine g/t/d of electricity (e.g. coming from an Electrical engineer) our comments pro and against Earth Hour or turning off lights for an hour will be speculative at best.

References:
>>RP cities for Earth Hour (http://globalnation.inquirer.net/news/news/view/20090318-194883/50-RP-cities-vow-support-for-Earth-Hour)
>>Scientific American article on light bulbs and saving energy (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=turn-fluorescent-lights-off-when-you-leave-room)
>>Church helps Earth Hour (http://www.klima.ph/news/hour.htm)
>>Wikipedia article on electricity distribution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_distribution)

REDKINOKO said...

Whoah dude. You really read up on the topic, huh?

I do have some points to discuss on your statement.

EH can also instill a more environment-friendly way of living, to make more people more aware of the connection of their power consumption and the environment.
Lately, I've been seeing a lot of posters about earth hour, how people should turn off their appliances for a specific time, but what I can't see is the part where the poster tells them how to make a more specific ways of being more "environment-friendly" as you say. I cant see any provisions for followthrough other than them asking me to switch off my lights on hour per year.

Or is it? Changing generation/transmission/distribution (and hence overall cost of electricity) over an hour's worth of turned-off light is close to impossible, but doing so could help the environment in more ways than affecting power g/t/d directly.
To be optimistic, it IS possible, since coal-fired plants can be started and stopped very quickly, compared to other power sources but the likelyhood of it being done is small because of certain risks and a generous amount of overhead involved. Performing large scale adjustments over a short period of time requires very close coordination between the power producers, the transporters and the distributors.

I stand by my thought that our savings last year was just a theoretical value and unless people wise up, or at least the organizers of earth hour wise up and start promoting consistency instead, nothing will be gained from this whole event.

Thanks for dropping by. :)

Anonymous said...

Sure, no problem :)
- Francis

Anonymous said...

Update on Earth Hour :)


>>http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=simply-symbolic-or-smart-environmen-2009-03-27

Anonymous said...

Aftermath of the Earth Hour 2009 Philippines:

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/view/20090330-197055/Philippines-tops-Earth-Hour-2009

Onwards to the Copenhagen conference :)

 

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