A balloon of the World Wildlife Fund is set up in front of St Peter's basilica during the Earth Hour campaign on March 29, 2014 at the Vatican. PHOTO: AFP
Lights went off in thousands of cities and towns across the world on Saturday for the annual Earth Hour campaign, which is aiming to raise money via the Internet for local environmental projects.
Sydney’s Opera House and Harbour Bridge were among the first landmarks around the world to dim their lights for 60 minutes during Saturday’s event. An estimated 7,000 cities and towns from New Zealand to New York are taking part.
Hong Kong’s stunning waterfront skyline was unrecognisable on Saturday evening, with the city’s tallest skyscraper, the International Commerce Centre, stripped of the vast light show usually wrapped around its 118 stories. Blazing neon signs advertising some of the world’s largest brands were shut off, leaving the view of the heavily vertical city peppered only with tiny lights from buildings’ interiors.
Earth Hour partnered with payments giant PayPal to allow donors to contribute to specific projects from Russia and India to Canada and Indonesia, using Asian fundraising site Crowdonomic.
Earth Hour chief executive Andy Ridley said before the lights went off in Singapore that the event had moved beyond symbolism to concrete action.
“If you want to get real social change you need to have symbolism,” he told AFP. “We are seeing some really big outcomes.”
Projects under the ‘Earth Hour Blue’ crowd-funding scheme – which aim to raise more than $650,000 in total – include a turtle centre in Italy and funding for forest rangers in Indonesia.
The event is being marked in more than 150 countries, organisers said.
The projects seeking crowd-funding include a $24,000 effort in The Philippines to bring fibre glass boat technology to coastal communities affected by super typhoon Haiyan in November last year.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 30th, 2014.
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I urge anyone who took part in this charade to search on "Sultan Knish", an avatar for David Greenfield's excellent blog. Read his thought-provoking "Night Falls on Civilization".
I'd love to see an apocalyptic-type movie where a tree-hugging family turns off all their lights and appliances, and wallow in their environmental bonhommie for an hour. Then, when they go to resume their comfortable lifestyle, they find nothing electrical works. When they go outside, there's nothing but starlight - except that on the horizon there is a glow from the burning cities.
That's funny, I turned on all my lights. Nothing like a well lighted house to celebrate such an eco-weenie event. Pity it snowed last night, so much for globull warming, or I would have taken my V8 Mustang for a drive.