Mark Gilbert’s Blog

Tonight I browsed to my usual Google homepage to be presented with a rather unusual sight, Google had turned the lights out, the Google homepage result is shown below.

Google users in the United Kingdom will notice today that we “turned the lights out” on the Google.co.uk homepage as a gesture to raise awareness of a worldwide energy conservation effort called Earth Hour. As to why we don’t do this permanently - it saves no energy; modern displays use the same amount of power regardless of what they display. However, you can do something to reduce the energy consumption of your home PC by joining the Climate Savers Computing Initiative.

On Saturday, March 29, 2008, Earth Hour invites people around the world to turn off their lights for one hour – from 8:00pm to 9:00pm in their local time zone. On this day, cities around the world, including Copenhagen, Chicago, Melbourne, Dubai, and Tel Aviv, will hold events to acknowledge their commitment to energy conservation.

Given our company’s commitment to environmental awareness and energy efficiency, we strongly support the Earth Hour campaign, and have darkened our homepage today to help spread awareness of what we hope will be a highly successful global event.

How green can you be? The UK’s carbon footprint is over 500 million tonnes of CO2 per year. Individuals account for 45% of this. Calculate your carbon footprint and find out how you can reduce it by turning off unused lights and other carbon-reducing actions.

I like to think I do my little bit, I don’t drive a huge car, I turn off lights when not in use and try to make sure TV’s are not left on standby. I suppose I could do more with regards to powering my computer off when not in use, but then it does already sleep when I’m away from it.

Here’s a good question, what’s the craziest thing you’ve done to save the environment? Answers in the comment section.

Cheers