Turn Your Lights Out

Have you seen that commercial featuring Anderson Cooper about his Planet In Peril show? If you've been watching the Major League Baseball playoffs, I am sure you have. The docuementary apparently follows Anderson Cooper around the world as he explores the effects of climate change and how humans are coping (or not coping) with these effects. It seems like an interesting show, even if I can't seem to get over the fact that Anderson Cooper is a Vanderbilt.

In addition to advertising for the documentary, the commercial/Cooper also asks us to take the Sharp Lights Out challenge. I found the entire commercial to be hectic and difficult to understand, which either means I'm getting old or it wasn't a great commercial. Regardless, I found the Sharp Lights Out challenge website and now things are much clearer.

The challenge is to get people who are watching Game Four of the ALCS to turn off their lights for the duration of the game. It's an attempt to save a huge chunk of energy (I believe "chunk" is the appropriate scientific term here). If you go to the website and sign up for the challenge, you are also entered into a contest to win a Sharp AQUOS ® LCD TV.

There is an obvious contradiction going on here: you aren't really saving energy by watching television for 4+ hours. And your reward is another television, and although I don't know how much energy that particular model sucks, I highly doubt it's carbon neutral.

Cynicism aside, though, it does promote awareness of the importance of conservation (and conveniently the Planet in Peril show and the Sharp AQUOS ® LCD TV, too). Hopefully a lot of people do turn off their lights during the game. Maybe there will even be some people who do it for the sake of conservation, and not for the LCD TV carrot. Anyway, if people do indeed save some energy, that's a good thing. Awareness is always positive.

And it got me thinking -- maybe I'll have my own challenge. I'll call it the Turn-Off-All-Your-Lights-And-Television-And-Read-By-Candlelight-For-One-Night Challenge. I'm not sure what I'd give away as a prize, but I'm guessing it would save more energy per-person than the Sharp Lights Out challenge!