A few weeks ago, as a world we did a voluntary "turn off the lights" hour. Enormous amounts of power were saved, all over the world, and that was voluntary for one simple hour.
Unless you are living under a rock or in the Bush Administration, the word is getting out loud and clear that we need to drastically change what we do as a human race to slow or stop global warming. What if, as part of our effort, we started to do voluntary "power out" hours not only once a year, but weekly? Or even daily??? Even if some people would not or could not participate, it could be a step in the right direction for stopping our energy usage from killing us faster than it already is.
Think of it--each energy user in the world pledging to turn off non-essential lighting and energy usage for ONE HOUR seriously once a day. This is only the start of a new awareness of how we could be doing so much more.
We are going to have to start thinking of "sacrificing" our greed for easy energy and entertainment. As a beginning, let's start with something easy, yet something mindful. Something we may not mind adding more of, once we see how easy it is.
Decide on your hour. Encourage your towns and cities to decide on an hour--every week. It doesn't even all need to be the same hour all over the world. See how easy it could be.
Millions of tons of green house gases. It could become a festival, an event to look forward to, a time to be thinking of something larger than one's self, once a week, once a day or more.
Another thing we can all be doing now is signing up for Com Ed's Nature First program, which gives permission during high power usage times in the summer to shut down your air conditioner for 1-3 hours during the day. I did this in California when we lived there, and even on days that got over 100 degrees F I barely noticed my comfort level changing in the house at all, even if I was working from home all day.
It's these are easy steps, and we should be making them...now.
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