It is march and the day we "celebrate" Earth Hour is here, 26th March. On this day, every body switches off their lights between 08:30 PM and 09:30 PM to protest or show their support against climate change!
What I do not understand is, by switching off lights for one hour for one day in a year, how does it help? It is not just symbolic gesture! I believe such gestures are of no use.
By we switching off power for one hour, the power plants burning coal are not going to halt productions. Nor are they going to burn less coal in that one hour. The amount of coal being burnt is going to be the same. Hence the smoke or deadly gases they produce is going to be the same. In India please note all power plants work at full capacity every single day. We generate much less power than the demand. In order to make some difference, you need t follow Earth Hour on a daily / regular basis.
Follow a few things every day and you will help in making the change.
1. Switch off your electrical appliances when not in use. Keeping them in stand-by mode does not mean switching off, they still consume power
2. Judiciously use water, the more water you use, the more number of times will the water pump be switched on to top-up your over head tanks.
3. Don't keep your cell phones hanging to the wall socket all the time. Remove them from the charger and let them discharge completely before hooking them back up. This way the battery life increases.
4. Make sure your AC is set to ambient temperature. If you over-cool or under-cool, you end up making your AC compressor run more and consume more power.
5. When you run your washing machine, make sure you put in the optimum load. Less load means, you are consuming more than required power, more load means, the motor works harder hence more power consumed.
and many more such small things will help.
Follow this everyday and celebrate Earth Hour / Day every day, rather than one symbolic hour / day.
