Earth Hour Cities Sign Up
14 January 2008 at 12:05 pm
Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne are in the first group of 14 cities around the world to sign up to take part in the global ‘Earth Hour’ campaign in 2008.
They’ve joined Chicago, Copenhagen, Tel Aviv, Toronto and others to create awareness and demonstrate leadership by agreeing to switch off their lights on March 29, 2008.
World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) announced the cities at the Earth Hour launch, a global initiative in which cities and communities will turn out their lights to symbolise their leadership and commitment to finding solutions for climate change.
Cities from across Europe, North America, Asia and Asia Pacific were named as the flagship participants in the WWF-led event on March 29 with more cities expected to join in the days ahead.
WWF’s inaugural Earth Hour took place in Sydney Australia in March 2007 with more than 2.2 million people participating in an effort that darkened icons such as the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge and resulted in a ten per cent drop in energy usage – double what had been predicted.
For one hour on March 29, 2008 the lights of the City of Melbourne will go out and Melbourne residents and businesses will get the chance to signal the need to reduce global warming to the rest of the world.
The Council says it will be turning off all non-essential lighting leaving street lighting and safety lights on and encouraging residents and businesses to get on board.
Participants in the ‘Switch off your lights for an hour’ program are actually pledging to reduce their emissions by five per cent. The City of Melbourne says it is committed to going a step further with Melbourne aiming to be a Zero Net emissions City by 2020.
Your community can sign up to join Earth Hour at www.earthhour.org
