Lights Off for Earth Hour

Earth Hour 2009

Published Date: March 28, 2009

This Saturday (28th March) marks an effort to raise awareness of the need to take action on climate change. For a global problem, the initiative needs to be global, and so it is proving with Earth Hour – a worldwide initiative which recommends that every business and household switch off its lights and non-essential electrical appliances between the hours of 8:30 and 9:30 pm. By doing this, it is hoped that the amount of energy wasted will come down not only on Saturday night but, given the awareness raised by Earth Hour, people will take the decision to keep all non-essential appliances off when they are not in use. Earth Hour 2009 is the second annual worldwide celebration, but the movement has been in place since 2005.

Originally celebrated in Thailand in 2005, Earth Hour arose again in Australia in 2007, with lights going out across Sydney at 7:30pm. Last year was the first time that it officially became an international movement however, with thirty-five countries getting involved on a governmental level, and in all 400 cities taking part. Monuments such as the Empire State Building, Sydney Opera House, Bangkok’s Wat Arun Temple and the CN Tower all switched off non-essential lighting for the day. This year, the number of countries and cities participating has gone up by a huge amount, with 82 countries involved and more than 2100 cities. With the United Nations Climate Change Conference due to take place in December, organizers are hoping that the event has as great a level of success as possible.

Although it has had its critics, Earth Hour is viewed by and large as a major method of raising awareness. The amount of energy saved on the evening will, it is true, be dwarfed by the amount used during the rest of the day, and there are many who view the event of tokenism. The environmentalist response to this must be to point out that if one must consider it to be symbolism, it will at the very least be symbolic of differences we can all make in our own energy consumption, and in the use of energy in general. With so man y countries and cities already taking part in the campaign, the importance of as high a level of compliance as possible to demonstrate to national governments the public desire for action on climate change is essential.

100+ cities in Canada are signed up to the event – a sign of national feeling on the issue – and when you realize that the idea at the outset of this year for the organizers was to get 1000 in total worldwide, the fact that this has been more than doubled is something quite astonishing to behold. For the first time, there will be participation from Africa, with Kenya and South Africa both signed up. India and China – each of which has a population of over one billion people, have also agreed to participate. This is a real measure of what people power can achieve.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Thegreenlivingblog.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to A Dawn Journal. This article originally published on the above website on March 28, 2009.

The World’s Top Richest People

World’s Top Ten Billionaires 2014

First Published: March 2014 ADawnJournal.com

Forbes magazine recently published its annual ranking of global billionaires. Microsoft’s founder Bill Gates is on the top spot, pushing down Carlos Slim, who was on the top last year. Here are the top ten global billionaires for 2014:

The Top 10 billionaires

Bill Gates ($76B)

Carlos Slim Helú ($72B)

Amancio Ortega ($64)

Warren Buffett ($58.2B)

Larry Ellison ($48B)

Charles/David Koch ($40B each)

Sheldon Adelson ($38B)

Christy Walton ($36.7B)

Jim Walton ($34.7B)

Liliane Bettencourt ($34.5)

Source: Forbes.com

Here are some highlights from the ranking:

– There were a record number of 1,645 total billionaires.

– Bill Gates ranked #1 in 15 of the last 20 years.

– Due to Facebook’s recent $19B accension of WhatsApp, its founders Brian Acton and Jan Koum became 551th and 202th on the list.

– The US continues to dominate the list (492 billionaires), then Europe (468) and Asia (444). Country-wise, China (152) and Russia (111) have the most billionaires after USA.

– Some new countries were added for the first time: Algeria, Lithuania, Tanzania, and Uganda.

– More than 30 Canadians made it to the list.

– About 1000 people dropped off the list and 16 passed away.

– 1080 billionaires were self-made, 207 were inherited, and 352 were partly inherited.

– A record number of 172 women billionaires (up 25 percent from last year) made it to the list. Total new 268 billionaires were added to the list.

Earth Hour A Reasonable Success

Earth Hour Was A Global Success

Published Date: April 6, 2009

This year’s Earth Hour seems to have gone off pretty well, if the early figures are to be taken at face value. An increase in the energy saved as part of the global initiative has been reported, with some individual cities reporting results which represent a doubling of the decrease in energy use. Along with this, some cities which joined in for the first time have reported large savings of electricity which have exceeded expectations. The big headlines appear to be the Philippines, where 647 cities and towns (and an estimated 15 million people) joined in with the initiative to deliver results way beyond what was expected.

Although there has been controversy over the event, with many people and news outlets, among them FOX News, weighing in on the skeptical side of things, a cautious welcome has been given to the results that Earth Hour 2009 has managed to bring about. In The Philippines, while some data is still being ratified, more towns and cities joined in than anywhere else, with Greece coming in second. However, there are other results with importance too – not least in Delhi, India, a first time participant, where the power demand dropped by 1000 MW.

In Canada, Ontario as a province managed a saving of 6% on electricity with Toronto on its own displaying a decrease of 15.1% having posted 8.7% for Earth Hour 2008. Figures like these certainly seem to suggest that Earth Hour is getting a message through to people, and encouraging a more stable use of electricity. The skepticism which continues to ride high centres around the fact that savings on the financial side of the matter have been more or less symbolic, but this misses the point. By showing that it is possible to make large-scale energy savings, Earth Hour may yet be able to drive home the point that our dependency on non-renewable forms of energy is something that can be broken.

A message is getting through to people that if they want to cut their dependency on these forms of energy, such a thing is possible. If people can see that it is not too difficult to live without the constant use of electric lights and non-essential power-driven appliances, then it is something that can be harnessed to allow us to live a cleaner, greener future as a planet. For one thing that has come out of Earth Hour 2009 is the sheer spread of the message.

Canada has always been among the most prominent areas in the vanguard of the green movement, but the continuing advances made by this year’s most compliant countries are telling as well. Countries as distant geographically and as divergent culturally as Canada, Greece and the Philippines, along with the likes of Sweden, Ireland and Vietnam are showing an ability to take the message and run with it, something that gives us all hope for the future. With the positive news still being digested, it is now important that no-one thinks the work is done, as there is a lot still to do to ensure that the non-essential energy usage stays low, and that Earth Hour 2010 is one of the last ones we need.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Thegreenlivingblog.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to A Dawn Journal. This article originally published on the above website on April 6, 2009.

Australian Parliament Rejects Emissions Plan

Green Movement In Australia

Published Date: Aug 16, 2009

The green movement in Australia has suffered a blow this week, as the parliamentary vote on tackling global warming saw the opposition win out with 42 votes to the government’s 30. This is seen as a major setback for the movement in Australia but not a final blow, as Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said after the vote in the country’s senate that the government would seek to re-introduce the bill after the mandatory three month waiting period. This brings into the situation a possibility of some very interesting developments not just on the environmental issue but some potential constitutional developments.

One of the notable eventualities which could arise from this reverse in the Senate is that, if the government pushed forward the same legislation and was then defeated, it could potentially trigger a general election. This makes the potential legislation quite a powerful issue, and could well lead to some political horse-trading as the ruling Labour party looks to win over some of the current skeptics. As things stand, t he votes against the bill outnumber the votes for it by twelve. In order to gain a majority, seven senators would be required to change their vote.

As things stand, opposition to the legislation makes, as politics often does, for strange bedfellows. The government was essentially leveraged by opposition on both sides – from Green members who did not feel that the measures proposed went far enough towards tackling climate change, to members of the Conservative opposition who viewed it as being excessive. The measures proposed certainly go further than any yet proposed by a government, in offering a system of carbon trading which would require the more polluting companies to pay for their carbon emissions and rewarding companies who went some way to being carbon neutral.

One of the issues raised by conservative opposition legislators was that to adopt the propositions of the bill would be to put Australia in a disadvantageous position ahead of the conference on climate change to be held in Copenhagen in December. The government has argued that their position would only be weakened by going to Copenhagen without having adopted a coherent and radical plan for the reduction of carbon emissions. This gives the government a dilemma. Trying to win over enough senators means either adopting tougher measures to win over the Greens and alienating the conservative bloc, or vice versa.

Prime Minister Rudd may not be overly inconvenienced by an early election. Australia is due to go to the polls in late 2010 anyway, so bringing the election forward by a year while his approval ratings are high (and they far exceed those of the leader of the official Opposition) may not be the worst thing that could happen. It would also give the government a clear mandate. Australian voters are believed to favour strong action to cut down on pollution, and if they backed an incumbent Premier on a platform of environmental reform it would make it significantly harder to oppose the legislation in Parliament.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Thegreenlivingblog.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to A Dawn Journal. This article originally published on the above website on August 16, 2009.

Some Facts About Philippines Economy

The economy of the Philippines

First Published Date: April 8, 2014 ADawnJournal.com

With its over 100 million population and 95.4 percent literacy rate, the Philippines – a once poor country that suffered from sluggish economic growth – turned out to be one of the fastest growing in the world. GDP growth was 7.6, 3.9, 6.8, and 7.2 percent in from 2010 to 2013 consecutively.

In the first and second quarter of 2013, GDP grew at 7.7 and 7.5 percent, making the Philippines the fastest performing country in Asia followed by China and Indonesia. The Philippines economy in 1998 was less affected by the Asian Financial Crisis than any other Asian countries.

Filipino economy is made of 57 percent services sector, 31 percent industry, and 12 percent agriculture. The Philippines has the world’s largest business processing outsourcing centre and a strong industrial manufacturing sector for electronics for multi-national corporations.

In terms of natural resources, the Philippines is rich in oil, coal, copper, chromite, and nickel. Its major trading partners are Japan, USA, China, Hong Kong, and South Korea.

In terms of its 2012 GDP, the Philippines is the 40th largest country largest economy in the world. Its unemployment rate is at 7.01 percent and 26 percent people live below the poverty line. The Philippines ranks 59th out of 148 countries in the 2012 – 2103 Global Comparativeness Index, 89 out of 178 countries in the 2014 Economic Freedom Index, and 94th out of 175 countries in the 2013 Corruption Perception Index.

The Philippines, while greatly improving its economy, still it has a lot of work to do. The country faces many challenges, such as improving governance and the judicial system, upgrading its infrastructure, improving its extreme poverty, improving ease of doing business, attracting more foreign investments, and reducing corruption.

As we look forward, the Philippines is working hard to move forward into the future with its remarkable growth. Goldman Sachs predicts that the Philippines will be the 14th largest economy in the world by 2050. HSBC predicts that by 2050 Philippines will be 16th largest in the world and the largest in Southeast Asia.