The Earth Hour, which is organised by the World Wildlife Fund, will see people worldwide switch off the lights for an hour at 8:30 PM local time on Saturday, showing support for combat against climate change.
PEOPLE WILL attempt to save electricity tomorrow, by switching off lights at the Earth Hour at 8:30 PM local time. The Earth Hour observations, which began in Australia in 2007 are a grassroots movement by people worldwide, who try to show their support for action against climate change, by switching off electricity for an hour.
The Earth Hour, which is organised by the World Wildlife Fund, saw a reported billion people switch off the lights last year. The power was also switched off at the Paris' Eiffel Tower, Sydney's Opera House, the Great Pyramids at Giza, Empire State Building and in Shanghai.
This year, the Earth Hour observations begin on Saturday at 8:30 PM local time on a south Pacific Island Chatham, where the 12 street lamps that dot the island will be switched off. Crossing seven continents and 120 nations, it will end 25 hours later, at the same local time, this time at the Galapagos Island which is on the other side of the International date line. Apart from the previous landmarks, the Houses of Parliament in London, the Forbidden City in Beijing, Big Ben, Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio Di Janeiro, Burj Khalifa and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial will switch off the lights.
This Saturday will also see many nation debuting with Earth Hour observations, like Saudi Arabia, Nepal, Mongolia, Czech Republic and the Davis Research Station in Antartica, which is expected to turn off the internal heating for the Earth Hour.
Though many believe the Earth Hour observations to be just a token effort to combat climate change and hence futile, others call it a worldwide awareness of the climate change problem. The latter believe that it is a message to governments the world over that people are willing to fight against climate change, a message desperately needed after the failure of the Copenhagen summit.
