Dec 19, 2007
I got the strangest reaction when I recently suggested the adoption of a system for turning out lights in a hotel room
For a recent post about the conservation of energy, in which I discussed the European systems that turn off the lights within a hotel room the moment a guest leaves the room, I expected to receive broad expressions of approval from the hip readers of this blog. I thought they would applaud my suggestion that American hotels adopt the very same devices.
Would you believe, the typical response was critical. If the electricity was shut off, I was told, mobile phones and laptop computers could not be recharged while we were out of the room. Unthinkable! If the electricity was shut off, the air conditioning wouldn't continue while we were outside the room and the room would be hot when we came back, and would remain hot for a couple of minutes while the room was re-cooled. A hardship! If the electricity was shut off in winter, the room would be cold when we came back, and would take a couple of minutes to warm up. What a bummer!
And there you find the attitudes that presently prevent us from achieving a real reduction in the burning of fossil fuels to create energy. The same viewpoints find reprehensible the elimination of SUVs to improve gasoline mileage. Americans are apparently willing to accept all sorts of purely cosmetic touches in energy usage (leave hotel towels unwashed, recycle plastic cutlery), but unwilling to adopt a simple tactic -- turning off all lights in millions of unused hotel rooms -- that would, at one stroke, save infinitely more energy than all those do-gooder touches combined.
Isn't anyone among our readers willing to endorse the hotel proposal? Willing to exert pressure on hotel executives to adopt these simple devices? Willing to agitate about the fact that careless travelers, by failing to turn out the lights, are unnecessarily wasting enormous amounts of energy?
Write and read comments about this post.
Would you believe, the typical response was critical. If the electricity was shut off, I was told, mobile phones and laptop computers could not be recharged while we were out of the room. Unthinkable! If the electricity was shut off, the air conditioning wouldn't continue while we were outside the room and the room would be hot when we came back, and would remain hot for a couple of minutes while the room was re-cooled. A hardship! If the electricity was shut off in winter, the room would be cold when we came back, and would take a couple of minutes to warm up. What a bummer!
And there you find the attitudes that presently prevent us from achieving a real reduction in the burning of fossil fuels to create energy. The same viewpoints find reprehensible the elimination of SUVs to improve gasoline mileage. Americans are apparently willing to accept all sorts of purely cosmetic touches in energy usage (leave hotel towels unwashed, recycle plastic cutlery), but unwilling to adopt a simple tactic -- turning off all lights in millions of unused hotel rooms -- that would, at one stroke, save infinitely more energy than all those do-gooder touches combined.
Isn't anyone among our readers willing to endorse the hotel proposal? Willing to exert pressure on hotel executives to adopt these simple devices? Willing to agitate about the fact that careless travelers, by failing to turn out the lights, are unnecessarily wasting enormous amounts of energy?
Write and read comments about this post.
Labels: tips from readers
Fifty years ago, 
Arthur Frommer is generally acknowledged to be the nation's foremost travel authority. He is the founder of the
