Renewed Blogging After Twitter Inspiration: Earth Hour 2009

So, I’ve been on a bit of a blogging hiatus for a while as my admittedly ADD-driven attention span was captured by the much more immediate and iPhone-friendly micro-blogging of Twitter. In the past month, I’ve accumulated almost 500 “followers“ on Twitter as I’ve found myself in a rapid-fire posting and ”re-tweeting“ frenzy of interesting articles, posts, thoughts, inspirational quotes and the like, all in a bite-sized 140 characters or less. Just perfect for those of us with short attention spans and propensities for skimming. In turn, I’ve found an amazing group of Twitterers to follow, who have greatly enhanced the breadth and depth of my knowledge on all things green, eco-friendly, tech-oriented, as well as the exploding and ever-changing phenomenon of virtual social networking. I have a new heightened awareness of news, hot topics, and important issues, specifically about the topics that interest me most. I realize I learn about news faster via my TwitterDeck feed than monitoring CNN, NYTimes, (both of which I do follow on Twitter) or even my Bloglines RSS feeds. But I digress: my fascination with the dual-sided nature (i.e., useful connectivity tool/useless distracting time-waster) of technology-driven social networking, must be tabled for a separate blog entry. The point with which I start this post is simply that I have been overwhelmed with ideas to share and discuss, so it’s with this renewed inspiration that I relaunch my blog about making the easy choices to affect individual and global wellness.

As a reminder, there are two big Earth-friendly events I’m excited about this weekend: I’m prepping for the Seattle Green Festival this weekend, which I intend to live-microblog from on Twitter (follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/amyhale Twitter username: @AmyHale), photograph, and volunteer for, as well as ”Earth Hour“ this Saturday, March 28, at 8:30 pm ”local time, wherever you live on planet earth.“ In case you haven’t heard, Earth Hour is a global unification effort to raise awareness of global warming and climate change through the small yet hugely symbolic act of switching off your lights for one hour. Earth Hour began in Sydney in 2007, when 2.2 million homes and businesses switched off their lights for one hour. In 2008 the message had grown into a global sustainability movement, with 50 million people switching off their lights. Global landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Rome’s Colosseum, the Sydney Opera House and the lights of Times Square in NYC all stood in darkness.

In 2009, Earth Hour has a goal of achieving 1 billion supporters to switch off their lights as part of a global ”vote“ against global warming. The results of Earth Hour will be presented to world leaders at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009 which will determine official government policies to take action against global warming, which will replace the Kyoto Protocol. See http://www.earthhour.org/home/ for more information and some cool photos from past Earth Hour years. I, for one, am excited to see the lights on the Space Needle go off, and I intend on capturing it from the roof deck (or my totally dark living room, if the ridiculously cold weather in Seattle persists).

I’m very excited about the Seattle Green Festival, held this weekend, March 28-29 at the Washington Convention Center, where I’ll be volunteering both days at the Booth (Sunday afternoon) and also the store (Saturday evening). This year, the focus will be on the current state of the transitioning economy with information on the growing sector of green jobs, sustainable (easy) options for daily living, growing consumer consciousness around green products and choices, as well as evolving environmental policy. The following talks look cool to me, I’ll try to get to as many as I can to write about them:

Green Fixes for the Economic Mess
Seven Rules of Shopping for A Better World
Making Things Happen
The Consumption Conundrum: Buy Green Wtihout Buying Too Much
Tourist vs. Traveler vs. Vountourist
Sustainable Integration: Social Media, Networks, and Communities
The Slow Life Movement: Living Happier with a Lighter Footprint


Plus, the creme de la creme of simple, healthful and delicious culinary artistry will be here - Alice Waters, she of Chez Panisse fame and the mother of ”California Cuisine“ - maybe I’ll actually be inspired to cook for once!

Today’s Environmental Easy Choice:
I encourage you to turn off your lights this weekend for Earth Hour, check out the Earth Hour website, as well as the Green Festivals website: http://www.greenfestivals.org and continue in a daily practice of energy conservation in turning off unnecessary lights, turning down your heat, and unplugging or turning off the power strip your appliances are plugged into.

3 comments:

  1. What a cool idea. I am so going to do this and am excited. I love candle light and so this will be fun. Maybe I'll read my book on African history by candle light. :)

    Did I tell you that my wife has a job in the "green collar" sector? She works for an up and coming solar company--Abound Solar.

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  2. That was my commenting. James using my other blog account. :)

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  3. That's awesome James! I didn't know about your wife working for a new solar company - good for her; the green collar sector is where the economic growth is headed. I love candle light, fire light, darkness in general so I too am excited - 10 minutes from now here! :) Thanks for your comment!

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