Each ONE Change ONE: An Earth Day Event One Person. One Incandescent. One Day
“What you gonna do? Replace the bulbs? A lot that’s going to do for global warming!” That’s what the skeptics say. But what if 315 million people replaced 315 million bulbs in one day?
The average American home is estimated to have 45 bulbs in place, and as of 2010, there are 115 million homes in this country. That’s over 5 billion electric bulbs burning mostly fossil-fuel-generated electricity at an average 60 watts or 0.06 kilowatts per hour. If only one incandescent bulb per American (315 million of us and counting) is burning for six hours on any given evening, we are still using 41,391,000,000 kwh for the year, just with one light on.
Now consider what could happen if we replaced 315 million of these 60-w bulbs with the equivalent compact fluorescents, each of which uses only 0.013 kw/hr and only 28.5 kw a year. Then 315 million Americans would only be using 8.98 billion kwh for the year to light their homes, or almost 80 per cent less – saving 32,411,000,000 kwh. That’s saving over four billion more kwh than the state of Nebraska used for all its energy needs – residential, commercial and industrial – and two billion fewer kwh than an industrial state like Connecticut used during 2007.
Never mind the skeptics; one person at a time can change the way things are. Earth Day is coming April 22nd, plenty of time for Americans to get their bulbs together. Join the rest of the country and change one bulb on Earth Day.