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Are Climate Awareness Campaigns Really Worth It?

Jason99's picture
Submitted by Jason99 on Wed, 09/15/2010 - 12:58

Are climate awareness campaigns really useful?
I'll surprise you with the answer “yes and no”, which I believe will get your attention. Let's take one of the biggest climate awareness campaigns, Earth Hour, which requires you to turn off the lights for 1 hour. (Earth Hour: http://www.earthhour.org/). The problem is just that: the lights are off for only 1 hour. So how much electricity do you think is really saved? In Earth Hour 2010, close to 1 billion people participated from 126 countries.

Now lets go for some math.
Lets assume every 2 participants belonged to a single household, therefore 500,000,000 households participated. Of those households, each turned off 3 lights at 40 watts each (assumption of the average households).

So how much electricity was really saved?
Answer: 500,000,000 x 3 x 40 = 60,000,000 kWh

But we'll need to make a comparison because we don't know how much that really is by looking at that number.

The “Consumers Avg. Monthly Consumption” in the U.S. is 122,471,071,920 (kWh) kilowatt hours. That means the U.S. hourly consumption is 170,098,711 (kWh) kilowatt hours.

Remember, the 60 million kWh that was saved was the total from 126 countries in 1 hour. The U.S. alone consumes 170 million kWh in 1 hour, every hour.

Conclusion
The campaign caused only a small dip on the electricity grid and it didn't save an enormous amount of electricity when looking at the big picture, but something is better that nothing. That's where the “no” came from, because in the short run, not a whole lot of electricity was saved. But more electricity will be saved as the campaign gets bigger and more countries/ participants join in on the fun. The campaign participants are close to doubling every year at the time of this article.

But in the long run (where the “yes” came from), what awareness campaigns like Earth Hour really help with is spreading the awareness of green living. Hence the “awareness campaign”, not “saving electricity campaign”. Spreading the knowledge is the most infectious and positive thing you can do right now to help our sustainability because people in general make the biggest difference. The more they're educated, the more they can help the situation.

So, are climate awareness campaigns REALLY useful? Yes.

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How to create awareness among people in these campaigns

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 09/16/2010 - 01:54.

Creating awareness to change bring a change in the behaviors of the people is always a major challenge in these campaigns

Friends can’t we make things better rather best. Actually the objective is not to switch off all the lights and sit in the dark but to switch off the unneeded ones. I feel that campaigns in India can be made even better. We need to create awareness among the people not just to switch off for that one or two hours but make this a part of their daily routine.

Recent times media is playing a very lead role in creating awareness among the people and to promote various social activities. Why cant there be made a television show displaying the count down in the electricity meters during the earth hour time before, during and after. Then people can be more responsible to ensure that the electricity usage is optimized and we save resources for generations to come.

What do you say friends?

Agreed!

Submitted by Jason99 on Tue, 09/21/2010 - 18:00.

Some television awareness would definitely help spread the word and promote such activities. Sooner or later it will catch!

- Jason

—

"If a tree falls in the woods, and there's no one there to hear it, how will the Environmentalists react?"

— Anonymous