Earth Hour

Last Saturday from 20:30 to 21:30 it was the Earth Hour, celebrated worldwide, including in my city. Last year it was quite weak, so I could very well stay home and play some PC games, but a group of friends had plans to go to the Izvor park and take photos of a fire show organized for the event and my girlfriend learned about an Earth Hour themed photo contest and persuaded me to participate. Ok, here we go.

The contest was a bit fishy (in the end I concluded I won't send any photos, but that's a different matter): at the last moment, instead sending a list of places where thing happens, they said "nothing happens in Bucharest, so you can shoot anywhere you want, even at home" - but things happened, the above-mentioned fire show and two other symphonic concerts in a couple of other parks. But they were advertised on a competing website, one with and another without a "-"... fishy as said.

Fast forward to the show place, the first thing I saw there was the URL of the organizers in huge letters on the ground, covered by many candles and I wondered: is not about saving the planet? All the candles will send CO2 in the atmosphere... good thing we have some forests left to break it again. I guess is not about saving planet but about feeling ourselves better. Fake.

Fast forward again, shutting the lights off time... a number of buildings, from administrative ones to cultural institution to even hotels, were supposed to close the lights, including the Palace of Parliament, in the background of our location. Guess what? They closed a few lights and dropped a lot of curtains, so you think the lights are off. And it was Saturday evening... nobody working there, no Parliament, no other governmental institutions, at that hour probably not even the cleaning personnel.

Once the lights were "off" the fire show started, it was spectacular but as ecological as... see the illustration below:

So let me count:

• lights on on the background building, which were supposed to be off;
• live music on the stage (drums) with lights on (they were LED, but still using electric power);
• the sound system on, using electric power;
• a lot of cameras, some with lights and flashes in the audience, all using electric power;
• fire makes smoke, of course

A friend told me: maybe they use a generator - as if that would be better, still consuming fossil fuel, still polluting, probably eve more, due to poor efficiency of a small generator.

But enough with the negativism, as I said the show was spectacular and I, as many others, took a lot of pics. As a reward with the audience putting-up with my rant so far, here are a couple of those pics optimized as wallpapers and freely licensed (CC-BY-SA).