NEWS: Minimize use of Christmas lights to save earth, says solon

[ghosthunter]

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakin...rth-says-solon

Minimize use of Christmas lights to save earth, says solon
By Lira Dalangin-Fernandez
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 12:19:00 11/19/2010

MANILA, Philippines – Here comes the Grinch!

For Aurora Representative Juan Edgardo Angara, the glitter and glamor of Christmas lights adorning malls and commercial centers this season is not at all doing the environment any good.

The lawmaker appealed to mall owners and local government officials to minimize the use of lighted Christmas decorations to save energy and help mitigate the effects of global warming.

“I don't want to play the Grinch this Christmas season but we can celebrate the birth of our dear Jesus by helping save our planet. The use of so much Christmas lights and other decors that uses electricity should be minimized because lights are among the top greenhouse gas contributors on our planet,” Angara said.

Quoting researches, Angara said lights contributed 24.6% of the total greenhouse gas emissions around the world, making it the biggest contributor to global warming.

Angara also said too much use of Christmas lights and other decors using electricity were causing increased demand for oil.

“We are not just contributing to the destruction of our planet. We are also providing oil companies the best reason to jack up their prices,” Angara said.

Angara observed that many of Metro Manila's commercial districts and several local government units have begun putting up Christmas trees, lanterns and other Christmas decors adorned with colorful Christmas lights.

“They are really beautiful to watch and they make us really feel that indeed, Christmas is near. However, there are things that are more important than making our people happy through this extraordinary display of lights. We have to help save the planet if we want our children's children to continue celebrating Christmas for many generations to come,” Angara said.

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakin...rth-says-solon

[ghosthunter]

Global warming eh?

Maybe he should try cutting down the over-use of airconditioning and other wasted electrical usage (lights, etc in rooms empty of people) in the house of congress.

[speed unlimited]

Naobserbahan ko nga wala pang mga Christmas light na nakakabit sa mga bahay.

[chua_riwap]

Tell that to the guys at Policarpio St, Mandaluyong.......

[kinyo]

save the earth?

illegal loggers?

[chua_riwap]

save the earth?

illegal loggers?

Agree....dun sa Aurora, dami nyan.

[shakatak70]

Puntahan ninyo mga bahay ng mga Senador at ibang politico ....makikita natin na punong-puno ng christmas lights....

naku magpapaniwala tayo sa mga yan..eh sila mismo daming lights...

[marg]

E kung.....

Minimize the use of Taxpayers Money

Kaya ba nila?

[renzo_d10]

Smoke-belching jeepneys, baka hindi nila nakikita yun.

[jimnyeatworld]

christmas LED lights na lang

[_Cathy_]

^Ang yaman mo OB. Quadruple the price of regular lights ang LED.

[safeorigin]

we actually have a bunch of those...

[wowiesy]

^Ang yaman mo OB. Quadruple the price of regular lights ang LED.

but i think mas mura sa consumption ang LED lights vs ordinary christmas bulbs..

[_Cathy_]

^True but we since don't put up a lot of lights the electrical consumption would be minimal for us. I can't bring myself to spend P500 for led christmas lights knowing that the regular lights cost only P120

[safeorigin]

led does cost more but at the long run saves more money

[cutedoc]

easy for him to say, go to his house and check it, i am sure there are a lot of christmas lights in his house, and check his a/c unit perhaphs it covers the whole house, to think the amount they are getting from the porks and their "gratuity".

wag magmalinis kung madumi ka naman, maligo muna!

[Bruks_pt]

Angara does have a point about the excessive use of christmas lights, however, he and his fellow "honorables" should do the right thing.. and they must set the example! Otherwise they are just a waste of precious oxygen...

[CVT]

Maliit lang naman ang konsumo ng mga Christmas lights vs. their centralized A/C systems....

Oh well.....

On the LED Christmas light, ours went pffttt a couple of nights ago. Culprit was the controller for the lighting sequence. It's a good thing that the plug has a fuse....

11.3K:snow:

[uls]

does using energy efficient lighting really save energy?

when something's more efficient, we use more of it

something environmentalists should consider:

No, You Can’t
http://www.project-syndicate.org/com...borg67/English

COPENHAGEN – Several thousand officials from 194 countries just gathered in Cancún, Mexico, for yet another global climate summit. Dissatisfied with the pace of climate diplomacy, many individuals are now wondering what they can do about climate change on their own.

For years now, climate activists from Al Gore to Leonardo DiCaprio have argued that individual actions like driving more economical cars and using more efficient light bulbs are a crucial element in the effort to address global warming. The United Nations’ climate panel and the International Energy Agency both echo this sentiment, insisting that higher energy efficiency could reduce energy consumption by up to 30% – making improved efficiency an effective remedy for climate change. But is this really true?

Here’s something to think about. Back in the early 1970’s, the average American expended roughly 70 million British thermal units per year to heat, cool, and power his or her home. Since then, of course, we have made great strides in energy efficiency. As The Washington Post recently reported, dishwashers now use 45% less power than they did two decades ago, and refrigerators 51% less. So how much energy do Americans use in their homes today? On a per capita basis, the figure is roughly what it was 40 years ago: 70 million BTUs.

This surprising lack of change is the result of something economists call the “rebound effect.” It’s a phenomenon familiar to urban planners, who long ago discovered that building more roads doesn’t ease traffic jams – it merely encourages more people to get in their cars and drive.

The underlying principle is a decidedly counterintuitive fact of life. You might think that learning to use something more efficiently will result in your using less of it, but the opposite is true: the more efficient we get at using something, the more of it we are likely to use. Efficiency doesn’t reduce consumption; it increases it.

The Breakthrough Institute recently highlighted on its blog some startling – and important – research findings along these lines, published in August in The Journal of Physics by energy economist Harry Saunders and four colleagues from the US Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories. As Saunders noted in a summary on the blog, he and his colleagues, drawing on “300 years of evidence,” found that, “as lighting becomes more energy efficient, and thus cheaper, we use ever-more of it.”

For this reason, the proportion of resources that we expend on lighting has remained virtually unchanged for the past three centuries, at about 0.72% of gross domestic product. As Saunders and his colleagues observe in their journal article, “This was the case in the UK in 1700, is the case in the undeveloped world not on grid electricity in modern times, and is the case for the developed world in modern times using the most advanced lighting technologies.”

The conclusion that Saunders and his co-authors draw from this is both surprising and hard to dispute: rather than shrinking our electricity use, the introduction of ever more efficient lighting technologies is much more likely to lead to “massive…growth in the consumption of light.”

It’s difficult to overstate what these findings mean for climate policy. In a nutshell, they tell us that, while increasing energy efficiency is undoubtedly a good thing, it is most assuredly not a remedy for global warming. Or, as Saunders puts it, “energy efficiency may be a net positive in increasing economic productivity and growth, but should not be relied upon as a way to reduce energy consumption and thus greenhouse gas emissions.”

This is not an argument that should encourage anyone to go out and buy a Hummer. But we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that swapping our current car for a Prius, or replacing our incandescent lights with energy-efficient fluorescent bulbs, will strike a meaningful blow against climate change. The real fix to this problem will come when governments focus on research and development aimed at boosting the proportion of green energy sources in overall consumption.

It may be reassuring to believe there are cheap and easy things we can do as individuals to stop global warming, or that the answer is to continue chasing a chimerical global agreement on carbon cuts, as in Cancún. But the real action that we can take is to press our politicians to put smarter ideas on the table.