Friday, February 29, 2008

Lights out celebrating Earth Hour 2008.




One evening at the end of March, 2007, 2.2 million people and 2,100 businesses in Sydney, Australia turned off their lights for one hour. It was called Earth Hour and it reduced the city’s energy consumption by 10.2 percent for one hour, which is the equivalent effect of taking 48,000 cars off the road for one hour. (See article in Natural Life, March/April, 2007.)
Earth Hour used the simple action of turning off the lights for one hour to deliver a powerful message about the need for action on global warming. With Sydney icons like the Harbour Bridge and Opera House turning their lights off and unique events such as weddings by candlelight, the world took notice.
Inspired by this collective effort, many other major global cities are turning a symbolic event into a global movement. So at 8pm on the March, 29, 2008 millions of people in some of the world’s major cities, including Copenhagen, Toronto, Chicago, Melbourne, Tel Aviv, Manila and Sydney will create a brief wave of darkness spreading around the world by switching off their lights and electrical appliances for the first international Earth Hour. This global initiative
has been organized by World Wildlife Fund International. Director General Jim Leape says, “The public has become increasingly alarmed about climate change. They’re seeing it in their daily lives, faster than worse than scientists predicted even a few years ago, and are increasingly impatient to see something done about it. People are ready to take action in their own lives and expecting their governments to take action.”

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