Earth Hour, Climate change and your vote

The Cat

Septus wrote: »

Echo wrote: »

japan wrote: »

Wait, what is this supposed to accomplish?

That's a genuine question, I'm not seeing what the purpose of this is.

Yes. It's like separating your organic trash from the non-organic.

Whatever you save in energy by separating that gets gobbled up by transport and management costs for treating it differently. It's not worth it unless you're a restaurant.

This is what I think about when I hear my local radio ads about buying local produce.

I don't know, well, any of the numbers, but I always wonder about the cost of loss of efficiency by buying local. I'll pay more money, to support an operation that might make inefficient use of land, and that money could instead be used to pay for the transportation costs of the non-local food, and them some.

Yeah, really not how it works. Local production of things like fruit and veg is efficient for a number of reasons, and not just reduced transport costs (and by the way, how in gods name did you just declare with a straight face that trucking a ton of tomatoes 20 miles is more expensive than flying them in from India?).

It definitely is more efficient use of land, and the demand for local produce helps keep good quality ag land in an area from being built on and lost for good (there are often large swathes of it just outside the ever-expanding burbs, due to historical settlement patterns).

It also keeps the local economy more diverse, and provides jobs. And all the farmer's markets I've ever been to sold their stuff a lot cheaper than my local supermarket, so I don't know what kind of crack you're smoking but that whole post was completely arse-backwards. And had very little to do with GW too.

japan

You know, one of the things that I really expected to change dramatically due to the rise of ubiquitous IT and networked computers was logistics and supply chain management. Instead, it seems like nobody is willing to move away from the paradigm of collecting everything to a central location, then distributing it out from there. I think it's a by-product of the desire of supermarkets to offer an identical experience and range in every store.

I can definitely see a system optimised to minimise travel distance working, it would just take the will to implement it.

The Cat

DeathPrawn wrote: »

Septus wrote: »

Echo wrote: »

japan wrote: »

Wait, what is this supposed to accomplish?

That's a genuine question, I'm not seeing what the purpose of this is.

Yes. It's like separating your organic trash from the non-organic.

Whatever you save in energy by separating that gets gobbled up by transport and management costs for treating it differently. It's not worth it unless you're a restaurant.

This is what I think about when I hear my local radio ads about buying local produce.

I don't know, well, any of the numbers, but I always wonder about the cost of loss of efficiency by buying local. I'll pay more money, to support an operation that might make inefficient use of land, and that money could instead be used to pay for the transportation costs of the non-local food, and them some.

This is slightly OT, but the benefits of buying 'locally' are just as much (if not more) about supporting small independently-owned and organic (to varying definitions of the word 'organic') farms than it is about transportation costs. Although small farms are less efficient than commercial operations in that they have a smaller yield per acre, a properly-run independent farm consumes far less petroleum-based products and does a much better job of renewing the soil and maintaining a healthy ecosystem. Rather than destroying the environment through irresponsible farming practices, they keep it healthy. Because these farms are so small, it isn't feasible for them to distribute nationally, hence the urging to purchase from them locally.

This is okay up to a point except for the comments about small farms. 'Small farms' in this context aren't just big backyards or whatever, they're still partly industrialised operations and the only thing that labels them small is an agribusiness market that thrives on amalgamating dozens of properties into one operation. At best in that situation you get something that looks like a kind of modern feudalism, with tenants/employees working the land for its absent owners. The political clout these businesses get due to their de facto control of the local food supply is also... politically worrysome. You in the US already experience this via the corn lobby, for instance.

Element Brian

I like how the day they chose this for was a Saturday.

Try doing it on a Wednesday.."Yea sure, I guess I can not watch Lost tonight; I'll just record it and..OH I have to unplug my DVR too? Screw that."

Mojo_Jojo

"Earth hour" is one of the reasons that nobody likes hippies. It makes no damn sense outside of generating smugness. In fact, an hour where people power everything down and then flip it back on again most likely uses more electricity in total than they otherwise would.

The Cat

Mojo_Jojo wrote: »

"Earth hour" is one of the reasons that nobody likes hippies. It makes no damn sense outside of generating smugness. In fact, an hour where people power everything down and then flip it back on again most likely uses more electricity in total than they otherwise would.

Its a penance ritual. Carried out for emotional comfort. between that and neighbour peer pressure, that's why its become established so fast despite the obvious hippie stupidity.

Picardathon

Dman wrote: »

I've said this a few times already now, I realize this is nothing great when it comes to getting people to make long term personal changes, the idea is to get such a large number of people to participate that it sends a message to industry, agriculture and government that a large number of people are willing to do something completely meaningless in order to appear like they're making a difference, suggesting they might care enough to put their consumer dollar or election vote where their mouth is.

Unfortunately politicians and businessmen aren't that stupid. They know that things like this and the collective decision to not buy gas for a day mean nothing and are probably good for them, as they draw attention away from things like raising standards on energy efficiency and emissions that can do something to help.

Dman wrote:

This is how I see it:
It be great if everyone suddenly started using mass transit instead of their car, but how do we get them to?

Your saying the solution is if everyone just starts taking mass transit that will be the incentive to make mass transit better.

I'm saying maybe if everyone rode mass transit for a day and also petitioned the government (and the event coincided with a bunch of engineers and scientists presenting the merits of mass transit over cars to world leaders) the governments would spend money on mass transit making it more appealing, simultaneously increasing the gas tax to pay for it, making driving cars less appealing, and suddenly everyone will use the mass transit.

Everyone already supports mass transit.
Once again, your plan seems to be that if a special interest group can get enough supporters to do an obviously meaningless gesture then the government will be fooled into thinking that this is the equivalent of geniune popular support. This will obviously fail when the officials who moved to increase mass transity use get thrown out of office by angry commuters and the replacements overturn everything that was done, but whatever.

Dman wrote:

I agree everyone doing something small and patting themselves on the back is shitty compared to if everyone just rode the damn bus/subway/trains we already have, but clearly your solution of saying "everyone already knows this" isn't working.

People do know, they just either disagree with it because they have been duped because of fuzzy science or they just don't care.

Someone brought up the Obama quote earlier, and they did so because he managed to perfectly summarize the true value of someone doing minor and solitary or minor and meaningless things to stop global warming. It's a collective action problem, and collective actions problems can only be solved by government (or by interested large industries, but they're part of the problem here.) From what I know about Canadian politics it seems clear to me that the Green Shift will do more to solve the problems posed by climate change than Earth Hour ever will, and the new power given to the Green party in financial funds will do more for the PR of the environmentalist movement, as those funds will be put towards the education needed to change voters minds so that they will vote for politicians who will pass effective measures on this issue.
Earth Hour might have been useful when global warming was a minor issue that nobody was aware of, but now? Awareness raising is done, and the value of awareness raising events died when Maddona told people at the live 8 concert to jump up and down if they want to save the earth. That was ridiculous; this is close to being so.

Echo

Some nutcases in the EU want to reduce carbon emissions by 90% by 2020.

Ninety percent.

Do they have any idea what that means? How much shit we'd just have to shut down and abandon?

Picardathon

Echo wrote: »

Some nutcases in the EU want to reduce carbon emissions by 90% by 2020.

Ninety percent.

Do they have any idea what that means? How much shit we'd just have to shut down and abandon?

It's like the millenium goals; it just looks and sounds nice, so it doesn't have to make sense or be at all reasonable. See: The Kyoto Protocol.

Jobastion

Turning off your stuff for an hour... hum... I'll make use of the extra energy available on the grid to open my windows and combat global warming by running my AC as low as it will go... with enough spare energy, I can cool the globe. That works, right?

Yeah, consider me in the opposed to this idea.
(This after having replaced 95% of my bulbs, and my heat pump, and added insulation, and ... yeah, I love saving electricity. Especially after the 20% hike in october. But the environment? Meh.)

Gosling

I file this right alongside the "don't buy gas tomorrow" people. People need to think this stuff through first. There's no real.... point. There's not even a "and afterwards, take note of what you might be able to stop using entirely" tossed in, which might have actually done a bit of good somewhere. It's just 'turn it all off for an hour and then go about your life'.

In fact, now I'm so worked up about the stupidity that I'm going to write .1% of a book about it. Maybe even .2%.

Professor Phobos

Hmm. I was going to launch into a discussion of why climate change is real and why people should accept the evidence in its favor, but I fear I'd never be able to get this thread on track.

So I guess I'd have to start a new thread, but I am tired. Another time.

Dunadan019

the extra heat generated by another 15 billion people in a millenium will be more than 90% of the EU shutting down...

especially since the rest of asia is gearing up.

Flay

I haven't read the entire thread, but here's my opinion.

I think that anyone who believes that turning off their electricity for only an hour, even if millions do the same, is going to make a significant difference in the long run is severely misguided. But I also don't believe that this is a futile gesture.

Every time they do this they release a set of statistics indicating how much power was saved. The point of this exercise is that it is a very minor thing to do, and yet it still makes a difference. Not a great difference, no - but a difference all the same. In doing this the organizers are not trying to raise awareness of climate change, but of the fact that much of the responsibility to fix the problem lies on the individual - or the family group, the small business, the corporation - contributing to a group effort.

The flaw with this is obviously that many people won't pay attention to the message this is trying to spread, and therefore will not change their lifestyle. But, being an optimist at the moment, I believe that there will be a percentage who will make a change as a result.

I'm not saying this is the best system to do this, nor am I saying that my opinion is the be all and end all. It just disappoints me to see everyone knocking this simply for trying to get a message across in a way that is less than perfect.

And there you have it.

japan

Flay wrote: »

I'm not saying this is the best system to do this, nor am I saying that my opinion is the be all and end all. It just disappoints me to see everyone knocking this simply for trying to get a message across in a way that is less than perfect.

The problem is that it's the wrong message.

Things like this encourage tokenism and back-patting (I recycle my cans/bought the organic veg in the supermarket/took the bus that one time/turned everything off for an hour, so I've done my bit).

What's required are the big changes. Economic incentives to make supply chains favour local supply, integrated transport planning to reduce the number of journeys for which a car is a practical necessity, a switch to predominantly nuclear power generation (this alone would cut the UK's carbon emissions by about 45%) and the removal of the political obstacles to the reprocessing of nuclear fuel so that we don't have to bury dangerous waste. The gains from any of these initiatives dwarf anything that can be accomplished by private collective action.

These are all big political issues that nobody campaigns about, because they're too busy concentrating on crap like this.

ElJeffe

Flay wrote: »

Every time they do this they release a set of statistics indicating how much power was saved. The point of this exercise is that it is a very minor thing to do, and yet it still makes a difference.

Problem is that it's a hatchet approach to a scalpel issue. Turning off every electrical thing in your house is unreasonable. Your fridge and freezer? Your thermostat in the dead of winter or the blaze of summer? Yeah, keeping those off for longer than an hour isn't viable, unless you like spoiled food and hypothermia.

The things you can keep turned off - electronics and appliances that don't require constant usage to provide utility - the energy saved there is buried in that saved by turning off essentials, so it skews the point. And there's nothing subtle in here, like "turn your thermostat down/up to save energy" or "keep your lights turned off a little longer until it gets really dark".

The message will be "Hey, by not using a single bit of energy, we can save energy!" Well, duh. But how much can you save in the long run by being smarter about electricity usage? Impossible to say, because that's not a figure we're looking for.

It's a stupid, pointless exercise from any possible angle.

Flay

Both excellent points; I can't truthfully say I've put a great deal of thought in to this.

japan wrote: »

Flay wrote: »

I'm not saying this is the best system to do this, nor am I saying that my opinion is the be all and end all. It just disappoints me to see everyone knocking this simply for trying to get a message across in a way that is less than perfect.

The problem is that it's the wrong message.

Things like this encourage tokenism and back-patting (I recycle my cans/bought the organic veg in the supermarket/took the bus that one time/turned everything off for an hour, so I've done my bit).

What's required are the big changes. Economic incentives to make supply chains favour local supply, integrated transport planning to reduce the number of journeys for which a car is a practical necessity, a switch to predominantly nuclear power generation (this alone would cut the UK's carbon emissions by about 45%) and the removal of the political obstacles to the reprocessing of nuclear fuel so that we don't have to bury dangerous waste. The gains from any of these initiatives dwarf anything that can be accomplished by private collective action.

These are all big political issues that nobody campaigns about, because they're too busy concentrating on crap like this.

I completely agree with this. I suppose saying '... many people won't pay attention to the intended message...' would be more accurate, which isn't surprising if people are simply inferring the wrong point, believing they've done all they need to do. I'm willing to retract much of what I said.

ElJeffe wrote: »

Flay wrote: »

Every time they do this they release a set of statistics indicating how much power was saved. The point of this exercise is that it is a very minor thing to do, and yet it still makes a difference.

Problem is that it's a hatchet approach to a scalpel issue. Turning off every electrical thing in your house is unreasonable. Your fridge and freezer? Your thermostat in the dead of winter or the blaze of summer? Yeah, keeping those off for longer than an hour isn't viable, unless you like spoiled food and hypothermia.

I expect most people won't turn those things off with or without earth hour. By minor I was referring to the timescale of the event in comparison to the total amount of time we spend with electrical items on. Nobody is going to turn off all their electrical appliances, but I assume it would be feasible to accumulate at least the same amount of power saved by turning some of these off when not being used.

EDIT: Speaking of turning off appliances, this computer doesn't need to be on.

Echo

So, Earth Hour on Saturday. Some countries started early!

Aegis

Very cute Echo.

I wonder if Toronto's going to do anything.

wunderbar

Aegis wrote: »

Very cute Echo.

I wonder if Toronto's going to do anything.

3 words and 5 seconds on google says yes:

http://www.toronto.ca/teo/earth-hour.htm

Entriech

This is the crash diet of energy conservation, and it angers me every time someone brings it up. The goal should be a permanent change in behaviour, not a feel-good flash in the pan dollop of self-righteous wankery.

The amount of money and effort put into advertising and running this would have been far better spent on, say, providing free or cheap programmable thermostats, or discounted energy evaluations, or any number of other real, concrete things that would provide a lasting realistic change or impact beyond this masturbatory hour.

wunderbar

Every initiative has to start somewhere. Like I said earlier in the thread, I do conserve energy when possible anyway, but this is something that is good to start an education campaign. The problem is is that the cities that participate forget about it until the next year. The trick is to make Earth Hour the highlight of the efforts, not the only effort. This is a start, and remember, it's only the second year. As the initiative matures, I think we'll see more done with the concept.

I agree with you Entreich, but I also know that it won't happen overnight. It needs baby steps, and this is one. It should be part of a full campaign, and I think it'll happen.