Lights out London - What a message is that?!
Posted at June 21, 2007 20:27 (UTC) from London, UKJust in this minute, the initiative 'Lights Out London' is on its way. The idea is that all major landmarks such as Buckingham Palace, the advertising signs at Piccadilly Circus (the first time since World War II), St Paul's and many others including the office towers in Canary Wharf switch off their lights between 9 pm and 10 pm tonight. Even supermarket chains take part in it.
The organiser of this initiative, Capital Radio, wants Londoners to 'send a huge environmental message to the world by switching off their lights' tonight. Sounds like a good idea to join the recent trend of becoming carbon neutral etc.
But let's take a closer look. As probably many of you may know, today is the longest day of the year on the northern hemisphere. That means that right now (9.14 pm) it's still so bright outside that you don't even need to switch on your lights in the first place. So no reason to switch them off, because they are already switched off. And what about the message they want to send? Well, I am not sure if the message will be received by the world because it is basically not visible! It simply does not make any difference if you have St Paul's illuminated right now or not. So I am not so sure whether the guys of Capital Radio really picked the right day of the year for their 'huge environmental message' or not.
It certainly would have made a huge impression if you do this some when between October and April, but not on the longest day of the year.
In any way, I feel part of the initiative because I have no lights on right now, only the light of my laptop's screen and it is running on battery. ;-) And I have still plenty of natural light to read my newspaper.
