Minutes To Midnight :

I was reading the morning newspaper today, and i chanced upon a little snippet labelled : Mixed Response to Earth Hour. Now for those of you who are unaware of what "Earth Hour 60" is, let me brief you about it. 

Earth hour 60 was an initiative by the people to spread a message regarding the protection of our environment. Every light was supposed to be turned off between a stipulated time of 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm. Moses Pereira, director of World Wildlife Fund, said "People all over the world have come together to send a strong message to our world leaders that the issues of climate change should be treated on priority basis."

Quite a heart melting theme indeed. Will it be helpful in any way? I rather doubt it. When people "all across the world" come together during such events, majority of them just want to be a part of an event, in there otherwise aimless life, so that a few years down the line, when something really is done by the "world leaders", they can bask in the glory of it and have something to talk about. As for the rest, who seem to be "genuinely concerned" about the environment, majority of them will be having Air Conditioners running on full blow, many will be using filament lamps, and several people will be having inverters at their place. 

Okay, now how do electric appliances really contribute to climate change? Well, I know for a fact that the MOST conventional source of energy (In India at least) is coal, rather the burning of coal. Which implies that if people use more energy, (which they sure do), they burn more coal. the waste products of the burning of coal are (the now famous) greenhouse gases, lots of hot water and ash. The hot water is let into rivers causing thermal pollution, while the ash ends up in our lungs. To add to that, the Generators themselves are outdated and inefficient.

I have not even touched upon the mad use of cars these days, which certainly affect the climate.

Now, if someone gave a Rat's arse about "climate change" they would become engineers and change the generators, they would sweat out hot nights, they would put their PC(s) on standby when talking on the phone or, switch off the LCD (otherwise the power guzzling CRT) while performing a virus scan or while downloading from the internet, while simultaneously ensuring that the television is not on in the other room.

But apparently, farcical activities such as "Earth Hours" etc. are "the in thing", which leaves me pitying the handful of genuine caring people who are trapped amidst glory hunters trying to leave their mark on proceedings. Have to leave for breakfast. 

Cheers.