Today 8:30 pm local, let’s turn off the lights

The Earth Hour Initiative is calling you and me, people, from all over the world, to “vote earth” by switching the lights off at 8:30 local time.

Many cities are joining this world event, and here in Quito the Municipality is going to participate by turning off not extrictly necessary public illumination.

This can’t be any hard for someone living in Quito or any other city in the world where energy supply is not 100% constant. We’ve gone thru serious energy crisis with long hours energy outages for several days or months. But even when we’re not in declared crisis, we can have an outage here and there, just as part of our lifes.  In fact, my last energy outage experience was a few hours ago, when I was comming back from a dinner invitation (yummy japanese food!)  and suddenly the street got dark. No lights inside the buildings, no lamps, no traffic lights!…But nothing too extraordinary for me either.

So tomorrow we’ll be joining the event by turning our lights off, that should be fun and in fact *very* easy for us. Contrary to what other online folks are recommending, I don’t think watching TV or real time blogging are good options for spending this short hour. If we’re to save energy then let’s save it by spending our time away from electronics (come on, it’s just an hour!)

Is this too hard for today’s people? I’m affraid it is for some. I totally understand that  a few years of living in a developed country can make you very electricity dependent. During my 3 years of stay in Japan I never experienced an energy outage, even during strong typhons and electric storms. That’s the future, I’d say.

On the contrary, a couple of months ago we experienced an hours-long national outage. They said it was caused by an electric storm.- back to reality

Anyway, I’m turning my lights *and electronics* off and hope other energy-privileged families are joining as well. Would love to hear your thoughts on energy dependance and your plans for tonight!

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