Cracking News Special Update on Earth Hour

What was it?

It was billed as one hour of darkness, when lights would be switched off all over the world voluntarily as a symbolic effort to reduce electricity consumption and fight global warming. The chosen hour was 8 o clock on the 29th of March, 2008.

Did it make a difference?

Yes. 24 global cities participated in the earth hour. These 24 cities reduced their power consumption during the day by 2.32 %, slightly below the expected reduction of 5-10%. But unfortunately, 2400 global cities and towns that did not sign up, exceeded their normal electricity consumption by 2.32 % (resulting in 1000% more power consumption as compared to power saved during the day) due to concentrated efforts by concerned and enthusiastic activists (including our very own netman - Usman Ali) in these towns and cities to spread the message of earth hour through emails, forums and blogs, which resulted in extra computer usage by both the concerned activists and the unconcerned readers of the emails, blogs and forum messages.

Who made the difference?

Many Important Movers & Shakers

Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin airlines accepted the Saturday 29 March global Earth Hour challenge, by pledging to shut off the lights at the massive Charity Hangar Ball hosted by Virgin Blue, Australia's low fare airline . The carbon-belching airline proudly announced it would "take on" the global Earth Hour challenge by shutting off the lights during the charity ball.

But unfortunately for Sir Branson, some party-poopers pointed out that more energy could have been saved had the massive party with a guest list of 3000 guests and 500 event staff, been canceled instead. (Almost 97% of the guests were non-Brisbanites who flew into the city specially for the event, using transportation services of carbon-emitting airliners.) That didn't deter the airliner from proudly describing the logistics challenge to transform he Brisbane hangar into a ballroom for 3000 guests.

"With no kitchens on site, tons of equipment is trucked (my emphasis) in, including ovens, cold rooms, chairs, tables, crockery, cutlery and glassware to enable preparation and service.Construction of the dance floor, audio visual wall, lighting , staging, bathrooms and provision for bands . . . will take place over three days," the airliner's publicity statement proudly disclosed.

No mention was made about the statistics of power consumption or carbon unleashed during the charity ball, which party-poopers say was 1000% more than the power saved during the hour the lights were shut off at the hanger.

Another important contributer to the cause of Earth Hour was celebrity socialite Paris Hilton. In the tradition of PETA activists going nude to protest against fur coats, Paris Hilton posed in nude during the earth hour as a symbolic gesture of shedding excess consumption of resources. But this gesture backfired, as this form of load-shedding led to millions of her fans spending extra time on their computers downloading her nude pictures.

But the maximum difference was made by billions of poorest and most underprivileged citizens of earth who were not even aware of the event. These are the people who don't consume power at all because they live in remote villages and hamlets having no electricity. Second on the list of those who made a real difference were consumers of power in thousands of towns and cities in developing countries like India which face regular power outages and daily load-shedding ranging from couple of hours to 12 hours a day.

Since these billions of unfortunates make involuntary contributions towards fighting global warming, no one cared to salute or congratulate them for their lifelong sacrifices and contributions to the cause of mother earth.

Will it make a difference in future?

Yes. All those who missed out taking part in this year's earth hour, will get a chance to make it a success a year later. On the earthhour.org website, there’s already a place for you to sign up for the 2009 event, which will fall on March 29. The organizers of the event are counting on you to raise the percentage of energy saved on 29th March 2009 to 3% from this years 2.32%. The organizers also hope that till next year's event arrives, activists will devote more time and effort to increase awareness about earth hour using all available mediums and resources, which will hopefully lead to around 35-40 global cities participating in Earth hour 2009.

We, at Cracking News, are counting on our politicians and authorities to break their promises of improved power supply. We expect the power crisis to get worse during this hot summer, which will lead to more power-cuts and load-shedding. The quantum of energy saved due to the inability of our government to solve the power crisis is expected to be millions of times more than all the electricity saved from all the earth hours from now till the end of the world.