Why do I not support Earth Hour? Simple – because I believe that we should be conscious of the Earth on a daily basis.
I’m not surprised if the Earth Hour was taken for granted by people who think they need to FEEL GOOD, easing their conscience by not using the electricity for 1 hour.
Doing Our Part
Here’s what you can do when it comes to your computing habits.
Change Your Monitor
A typical 17″ CRT monitor consumes about 80w of power based on Saving Electricity while a 17″ LCD monitor consumes less than half.
Why not? After all LCDs are already cheap nowadays and after all they’re already on the shelf so you might as well do yourself and the earth a favor to lighting the power consumption load. It generates less heat too, and have eye-hurting refresh rate like CRT monitors.
Instead of disposing your old monitor, you can turn it into a mini table or something – be creative!
Turn Off When Not In Use
Even if you did change your monitor to LCD, that doesn’t give you a license to have it ON all the time. Look at the power consumption of LCD monitors.
I always make it a point to OFF my monitor when not in use. For my notebooks and netbooks, I’ll set the power usage to turn the monitor off after an idle time. If I’m going to be away for it for a long time, I’ll just power it down.
Buy Energy Efficient Computers
Maybe it’s time to upgrade your computer.
Most computers today are not only consuming less energy, they have energy management that adjusts the processing power to consume less power when idle. For example Intel’s EIST.
As technology advances, the most power-draining components such as the processor and graphic cards are consuming less power while delivering same or better performance.
Instead of disposing your old computer, turn it into some furniture – be creative! If you do buy a new computer, take note of the next point!
Energy Efficient Power Supply
Every little bit helps, if possible, make sure your power supply unit is also energy efficient.
Check out the details at the 80 Plus Program‘s website for more details. You’ll notice newer range of power supplies are very likely to have the 80plus logo on it, indicating some form of power efficiency.
What a power supply does is that it acquires power form the socket to power up your component. So if you’re using 300w of power. A 70% efficiency power supply would acquire 428w from the socket while an 80% power supply would drain only 375w from the socket.
Use Your Computer In The Dark
If your eyes are fine with it and don’t require any reading from anywhere else except from the monitor, why not?
I’m writing this article in the dark and I often do my work and play games in the dark as well. 😀 It’s no different from being at the cinema where lights are turned off for your viewing pleasure.
Earth Hour? Earth Day?
Abstaining from electricity usage for 1 hour in a year isn’t any good if people don’t keep it in their mind.
Just do what I’ve listed above, and practice the similar habits (eg turning off when not in use) for every other electrical appliances and whatever else, learn not to waste, try not to drive around more than you need to, so on so forth. 🙂 Abstaining from usage of electricity alone is just a small part of the big picture.
In fact, I’d didn’t realize Earth Hour had passed as I was at the gym. 😀 A good way to kill many hours to save electricity usage is to meet up with friends and have a good time just catching up. That’s where power consumption is shared and less people per wattage consumed.
Why not?
There’s no point in turning off the lights (or any other thing) for one hour and forget about it after that. 🙂 You’ll do a lot more even by saving earlier each night and waking up an hour later each day.
Stop asking HOW you can participate in Earth Hour – it’s pointless. Start asking yourself HOW do you improve your daily routine to make it Earth friendly.
I’m with you on this. Long term perseverance is the only way to save the Earth, not some public stunt event.
I’m with you too on this! Nice post!
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I agree with most points, except that I prefer to work with lights on. 😛
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don’t use computer in dark too much
it’s not worth scarifying your sight to save some electric energy
thanks all.
@novatech – yes but seeing eyes being subjective, some people could stand doing things in the dark more than others. 😛 play games in the dark feels better.
yeah, can’t agree more..sustainability + minimize waste
-80+ PSU’s
-Cool n Quiet 😀
-Set OS to power saving
-install kill-a-watt meter (monitoring)
-switch it off whenever you dont need to use it..
the list goes on..but that’s just me (unless OC mode 😛 )
You only look at this event on the Negative side. I understand your point regarding that we should take care of mother earth on daily basis.
But you have to understand we are talking about the earth. The whole entire world. It is not easy to put in practice in every soul to train themselves from overusing the electricity. Earth Hour is a good event to at least noted them that ‘Hey our mother earth is suffering’ or some sort.
Everyone knows it is not enough, but are you suggesting that there should not be any more Earth Hour day since it only applies for 1 hour every year to most humans? I strongly disagree.
Still, thank you for the wide details on “doing our part’ (: i personally learn a lot from that.
I agree with Nels….
@nels / @darren – I’m aware of the existence of the campaign. 😀 In no part of the article am I suggesting “No More Earth Hour”, nor say the Earth Hour is bad.
I believe there’s a difference between NOT SUPPORTING and AGAINST. I’m not supporting the idea of Earth Hour because I find an HOUR is too little to give, considering we give so much more things A DAY eg Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, XYZ’s Day……….. but Earth gets a measly HOUR? C’mon people! Even we get 24 hours for our birthday, can’t the earth get at least 24 hours? 😛
I wrote this article as doing my part to educate my readers for the Earth. I’ve decided to push MORE for the Earth instead of writing the usual “What is Earth Day”, “How Do I Participate in Earth Day” and “I Support Earth Day” article. I think the title caught attention, as people would wonder who’s this imbecile who doesn’t give a damn about Earth Hour but as they read the article – they realize there’s more than Earth Day when it comes to supporting the Earth.
😀 more importantly, I thank you all for the comments and I am happy that people do learn from this article. It’s great if we can put all this (and more) into practice.
It’ll be great if others could share (via comments) on what they’ve done to contribute to help the Earth.
eh watching computer monitor in the dark is not really healthy for the eyes, yes?
cinema is a bit different as the screen is quite big away, and the nature of how it is displayed is very different from the normal computer screen leh.
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Perhaps dimmed the brightness of LCD during dark room is better for eye sight. Pupils will dilate more in dark room but the LCD still as bright while in well-lit room/daylight. It will strain on eyes.
Support to not supporting Earth hour..I’d been seeing people who keep telling me to support earth hour and even criticize me for not doing so. But end up I see these people are worth lower than trash. This group of people wasting energy everyday and yelling like they know the importance of this earth hour.
Earth hour is just to create awareness. Do you think it can safe alot of this carbon emission?
By switching off our light when we go out for dinner is more than earth hour. Yah…like you said so, earth daily.
absolutely agree with that.
Earth hour doesn’t HELP… it only contribute a little bit.
One day 1 hour within a year only? gosh…
what happens to the other, 364 days of their lives. If they use more than that particular “1 hour”
Is just a campaign. Celebrity does it, most people start doing it, people start following. Its like a trend of style of some sort.
– Use energy saving bulbs in your home. (how many people really use this?)
– use solar sources (how many people really use this?)
– use cooling efficiency system in your home. (how many people can afford and really work with this)
– etc, (so many systems/ items to reduce but not all are affording or applying it)
The awareness doesn’t really instill into people’s mindset, EDUCATING & practicing it, is the most important aspect. This event is more like… lets do it for the sake its a special event thingy.
a very nice ideal on saving power. People still don’t want to change their CRT because they think LCD is expensive but then they pay higher electric bill. Using LCD is more practical way to save power. Maybe we should run a campaign called let’s all change our monitor to LCD lol
Earth dont need us to save, Nels.
Earth is coming back ALIVE after being dormant. Techtonic shifts are starting up, the ring of fire is busting with activity, the magnetic poles are moving. Very soon our land will change again, as it did long ago from Pangea. Only difference is, species will come and go, so as humans.
Regardless of how humans try to “Save” earth, everything will come to pass eventually. Earth will always take care of itself. The stuffs we dig and mine out, came from the earth too. The shit we dump out, also goes back to the earth. When we die, we became earth.
Earth Hour is when people go to pubs and hang out and waste money on booze, and partying. Wasting more shit by the hour. Screw Earth Hour. Say hello to Earth-Quake!