A few years ago, a movement called “Earth Hour” started to bring attention to the environmental cost of electricity, and encouraged people across the world to turn off their lights for an hour.\u00c2\u00a0 It may be symbolic, but it’s nothing more.\u00c2\u00a0 When large businesses and landmarks shut off or dim their lights, it will be noticeable, but when you do it, it’s not even going to be a drop in the bucket.\u00c2\u00a0 You are not going to make a significant dent in electric usage by turning off\u00c2\u00a0your\u00c2\u00a0lights for an hour.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Here’s why: What do you do when the lights are out for an hour?\u00c2\u00a0 Turn on your 50 inch plasma TV to watch a movie with your big surround sound system, while your computer hums away in another room completely unused.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re the kind of person who’s given to take part in something like Earth Hour, you’ve already switched to CFLs and maybe even LEDs.\u00c2\u00a0 In my apartment, I have one primary CFL light that covers the living room and computer area.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s usually on from when I get home to when I go to bed.\u00c2\u00a0 In that hour when it’s off, I would save 23W.\u00c2\u00a0 23W of hydroelectric power, most likely.\u00c2\u00a0 My TV uses something like 110 W and my cable box uses 30W\u00c2\u00a0 (Even when it’s off!).\u00c2\u00a0 My computer is probably 200 W total.\u00c2\u00a0 Using any of those will use far more electricity than turning off my light will save.\u00c2\u00a0 The worst offender of all is my microwave.\u00c2\u00a0 In the 3:30 that it took to nuke my macaroni and cheese dinner tonight, it used almost THREE AND A HALF TIMES the amount of electricity that my trusty light uses in an entire hour.<\/p>\n
So, if you’re going to participate in Earth Hour this weekend, turn off the TV, turn off the computer, leave the light on and have a bowl of cereal for dinner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A few years ago, a movement called “Earth Hour” started to bring attention to the environmental cost of electricity, and encouraged people across the world to turn off their lights for an hour.\u00c2\u00a0 It may be symbolic, but it’s nothing more.\u00c2\u00a0 When large businesses and landmarks shut off or dim their lights, it will be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[139,137,138],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathpirate.net\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1339"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathpirate.net\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathpirate.net\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathpirate.net\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathpirate.net\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1339"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mathpirate.net\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1340,"href":"https:\/\/mathpirate.net\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1339\/revisions\/1340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathpirate.net\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathpirate.net\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathpirate.net\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}