The DJ who's not a DeeJay

My family and I have been joining the world in celebrating the annual Earth Hour initiative.  Earth hour is celebrated all over the globe by turning off your lights for a hour in your local time.  Despite the different timezones, each country will have dedicated an hour of their time to this cause.   If I had a satellite view of the earth, I would visualize as if the earth were a bunch or orange slices and one slice at a time would have their light turned off.

So how did I spend Earth Hour?

Of course, I started with turning off all appliances and lights.  I also unplugged any charging devices and turned off my phones.  For me, it's not just a matter of turning off light, but also non-use of power. And any stored energy  like charged batteries in laptops and phones and power storage devices like powerbanks and generators should also be turned off.  I also moved the curtains to the side and opened the windows to get some light and ventilation in.

I was also pleased that there was an Earth Hour celebration somewhere nearby cause I heard drums being played.  Just before 8:30pm, I also heard someone using a megaphone urging people to turn off their lights.  I did take a look at some neighboring houses and unfortunately, they had lights on.  It's either they are unaware about Earth Hour or aware but just don't choose to observe it.

For the last 30 minutes, I sat at the balcony, watching the stars and pondered on Earth Hour and how can I make a difference aside from just being one of many with their lights turned off.

One hour is really not that big a deal to sacrifice.  There are things like being stuck in traffic, or falling in line at a bank or watching a movie that easily can take up more than an hour a these are things that we can bear and endure because either we have to or we want to.

Meralco won't purposely shutdown our power to observe Earth Hour.  It's purely voluntary.  But the will, effort and mindset in each of us should be there to make a conscious decision to refrain from using power for at least this one hour every year.  If each of us give up that one hour for a good cause, what more can the entire 100 million Philippine population can do.  And what a great impact if all 7 billion of Earth's residents do the same too.

Quoted from Earth Hour's YouTube Channel: "In 2014, Earth Hour broke all records of mass participation by mobilizing hundreds of millions of people to become everyday super heroes for the planet and was celebrated in 162 countries and territories and over 7000 cities and towns. More than just a lights off event, over 60 local Earth Hour campaigns achieved remarkable environmental outcomes all across the world."

This year's theme is Climate Change.  What struck me from the official Earth Hour video is U.S. President Barack Obama's remarks saying that "We are the 1st generation to feel the effects of Climate Change and the last generation that can do something about it."  That's a scary thought.  Give Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) for example:  We've felt the effects of this super typhoon.  Now we need to do something about it so we won't encounter something as dreadful as this again.


Earth Hour 2015 is about getting the crowd to use #YourPower to change climate change.
I'm using my power as a blogger and social media influencer to reach out to others and make aware of the good that Earth Hour brings and what we all can do united in goal to contribute and save our Earth.  

Lights come back on after Earth Hour but let us continue to light the path towards helping change climate change.

I remember last year's Earth Hour experience.  As much as Aileen and I wanted to support the cause, we were on the road in Makati.  The only lights we had on were the headlights and I was worried how we could possibly turn them off.   We couldn't park cause the vicinity wasn't a safe at night, much more in the dark.

Fast forward to 2010.   We didn't have any plans to go out for the evening and so we just stayed at home.  We got to prepare for Earth Hour this year.   We were hurrying our dinner preparations by 8pm cause we didn't want to eat in the dark.   So by the time Earth Hour started at 8:30pm, we turned all our lights off (5 minutes after just to clean up the dining table) and just spent it in our front yard.

We placed 2 monoblock chairs and sat there telling stories to each other.  It's a good thing that the moonlit sky shed us some light.  We totally turned off all lights and didn't even light any candles.  In addition to turning off our appliances, we unplugged them to be sure that they didn't consume any standby electricity.   We also decided to turn off our gadgets even if it was stored energy.  So we turned off our celphones and laptops and just took a few pictures from our digicam to document and remember Earth Hour.

Sadly though, we were the only ones in our street who had our lights totally off.  It seemed that our neighbors were either ignorant of Earth Hour or didn't care to support it.   They may have mistaken us for not being at home.

Around 9:40pm, we decided to end Earth Hour and went inside the house.   We know that it's only one hour long, but it also is a reminder to make an effort to conserve energy.   It's not a matter of whether you can afford it or not.  It's the mindset that electricity requires resources, and the earth, as big as it is, doesn't have unlimited resources for mankind.  Thus, we could show our concern by doing our part as citizens of mother earth.

Earth Hour is not just about turning off the lights for one hour once a year.  It's a conscious commitment to care for the world we live in.

Last March 28, 2009 at 8:30pm was Earth Hour where everyone was advised to turn off the lights for 1 whole hour to show support for energy conservation.