For a ‘greener’ planet: Lights off for Earth Hour’s global crowd-funding call

The Express Tribune/AFP ^ | March 30, 2014

[kingattax]

Lights went off in thousands of cities and towns across the world on Saturday for the annual Earth Hour campaign, which is aiming to raise money via the Internet for local environmental projects.

Sydney’s Opera House and Harbour Bridge were among the first landmarks around the world to dim their lights for 60 minutes during Saturday’s event. An estimated 7,000 cities and towns from New Zealand to New York are taking part.

Hong Kong’s stunning waterfront skyline was unrecognisable on Saturday evening, with the city’s tallest skyscraper, the International Commerce Centre, stripped of the vast light show usually wrapped around its 118 stories. Blazing neon signs advertising some of the world’s largest brands were shut off, leaving the view of the heavily vertical city peppered only with tiny lights from buildings’ interiors.

Earth Hour partnered with payments giant PayPal to allow donors to contribute to specific projects from Russia and India to Canada and Indonesia, using Asian fundraising site Crowdonomic.

Earth Hour chief executive Andy Ridley said before the lights went off in Singapore that the event had moved beyond symbolism to concrete action.

“If you want to get real social change you need to have symbolism,” he told AFP. “We are seeing some really big outcomes.”

[nothingnew]

Not to mention the failures that naturally occur to lights from the power surge when the lamps are first struck.

How true. Most lamps (bulbs) flash out when you turn them ON. When is the last time you know of that a light bulb went out while in use? It almost happens every time when you turn it ON.

FMCDH(BITS)

[publius911]

Last night was fun. Turned on every visible manifestation of power on the property.

The bad news is that going out around 9:15pm to see how my neighborhood was doing, it was discouraging. I felt like the lone ranger.

[Darksheare]

But heavily traumatic to the enviromentalists.
Fair trade, I get entertained by their horror at smelling clean and not having vermin infested body growth after having been fed actual food, and they get crippling trauma for the rest of their lives.