2 years ago, I had an article on Earth Hour campaign,
about how it failed to provide the truth and how it succeeded in luring all the
young and energetic people who were always eager to contribute. Now,
fortunately (for me), I have more evidence about the so-called environmentally-friendly
campaign.
The base of the event is to encourage people to turn
off the using-electricity device, especially light-bulb, to save energy and
therefore reduce CO2 emission. The idea seems to make sense: if we do not use
electricity, then no CO2 emits. However, there are some mistakes and problems
with the campaign.
To begin with, it actually does not reduce the CO2
emission. Worse, it does increase that. How is that possible? First, all the
engineers know that a small decline in electricity consumption does not necessarily
translate into less energy being pumped into the grid, therefore will not
reduce emission. Second, the cozy candle lights. Among many household devices
which consume electricity, Earth Hour focuses intensively on the light bulb. It
is undeniably good marketing idea. No one will notice that Earth Hour is on the
air if we just turn our wash-machine off. In the modern world, darkness catches
our eyes faster than the light. However, there is a unwanted consequence of
this brilliant idea. In order to make our eyes not just a decoration (and
perhaps to make the event more observable. Who knows?), the campaigners of
Earth Hour have used the cozy candles, which seems so natural and friendly to
the environment, to bring back the light. Make no mistake, candles are still
fossil fuels, and almost 100 times less efficient than your light bulbs. Using one
candle cancels out even the THEORETICAL
CO2 reduction, using two candles means you are doing more harm than good (Not
to mention the effect of CO2 on global warming is still on dispute)
Secondly, Earth Hour gives a false conception about
global warming. Tackling global warming is absolutely not that easy. It needs more effort than just turn off your bulbs. If
everyone in the entire world cut all residential lighting, and this translated entirely into CO2 reduction, it would be the equivalent
of China pausing its CO2 emissions for less than four minutes.
Switching off lights will only cause it harder to see.
Thirdly, the worst thing about Earth Hour is how it
ignores the fact that electricity has been a miracle to humanity. Without the stable
and decent light made when electricity burns vonfram, we cannot have an active and
productive life after sunset. Without the ion running through the tube, there
will be no computers, no cars, no air-conditioners. Electricity has raised the
human’s productivity to a new level. We need more of it, not less.
However, I am not here today just to talk about
Earth Hour. There is something else I want to share with you, in case you are
still confused.
The next revolution on energy will not be on whether
we can find another oil well, or another source of energy, or we can make those
recent renewable energies such as solar and wind energy cheaper and therefore
available. The next revolution will be on the efficiency of using and storing
energy.
If we have some modest knowledge about physics, we
may know that electricity is a very special product because it is very
difficult to store energy. For example, in the rain season, hydro power plants
work at their largest capacity, and produce lots of electricity. Sometimes, the
supply is bigger than demand for energy. However, we cannot save that surplus
energy for the dry season. The best thing we can do so far is to get rid of
that tragic to store those powers into battery. Those batteries work as
inventories for electricity. The only problem with battery is again,
efficiency. We still produce surplus energy and those batteries still are not
able to store all of them. If we can, in a near future, discover a better way
to make battery, then searching for another source of energy will make sense.
It is undoubted that no matter how much energy we
can have, we will run out of it sooner or later if we do not know how to use it
efficiently. One of the most famous example of how efficiency matters runs
along with technology race in smartphones. Recently, the smartphone market is
divided mainly into 2 big competitors: iOS from Apple and Android from Google.
If we have a chance to look the information of the devices running those systems,
we may notice that iphone, which runs ios, always has a smaller battery
capacity than those from Android. However, the customers who complain about
battery life are usually the ones who use Android. Apple does not need to make
a big battery, which will lead to bigger phone, to keep their phone last as
long as those running Android because they know how to make their OS use
battery more efficiently. I still remember 4 years ago when the first Ipad was
introduced, an expert claimed that if iPad still used the old technology from
20 years before, it would require the whole Hoa Binh hydro power plant to
supply the energy.
Efficiency, not Earth Hour or solar energy, will save
the Earth.
kz (and Slate.com)
