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Earth Hour: landmarks to switch off lights to help save planet Earth Hour: landmarks go dark to highlight plight of planet
(about 11 hours later)
More than 100 landmarks across the UK, from Buckingham Palace to Edinburgh Castle, are switching off their lights to mark this year’s Earth Hour. Cities around the world were marking Earth Hour on Saturday by turning off lights at 8:30pm local time in a call for global action on climate change.
The lights will go off at famous buildings and structures across the country between 8.30pm and 9.30pm on Saturday as part of the international event organised by conservation charity WWF to urge action to save the planet. The Earth Hour gesture calls for greater awareness and more sparing use of resources, especially fossil fuels that produce carbon gases and lead to global warming.
Sydney Opera House, Egypt’s Great Pyramids, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Brazil’s Christ the Redeemer monument and the Empire State Building in New York are among the sites worldwide where the lights will be switched off. Beginning in Sydney in 2007, Earth Hour has spread to more than 180 countries, with tens of millions of people joining in.
'It's more than just turning off the lights': what else to do for Earth Hour In Hong Kong, major buildings along Victoria Harbour turned off their non-essential lights and the city’s popular tourist attraction known as the Symphony of Lights was cancelled.
Landmarks, businesses and people switch their lights off for an hour of darkness as part of the event, which aims to highlight the impact humans are having on the planet through climate change, pollution, plastic and food production. More than 3,000 corporations in Hong Kong signed up for Earth Hour 2019, according to the WWF Hong Kong website. Skyscrapers including the Bank of China Tower and the HSBC Building in Central, the city’s major business district, switched off their lights in response to the global movement.
Millions of people in more than 7,000 cities in more than 170 countries are expected to take part this year, to send a message to leaders that protecting the Earth should be top of their agenda, WWF said. The City of Lights also turned off the Eiffel Tower’s nightly twinkle to mark Earth Hour. Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo dimmed the lights on the city’s most famous monument for an hour.
In the UK, the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, the Shard, Cardiff Castle, Liverpool Cathedral, Old Trafford, Brighton Pier and the Eden Project are among the landmarks participating. In Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, the island’s tallest building, Taipei 101, joined surrounding buildings in shutting off the lights as part of the Earth Hour event.
Last year across the UK, 10 million people took part, along with more than 7,000 schools, 400 landmarks and thousands of businesses and organisations, the charity said. In coal-reliant Poland, top tourist sites also turned off their lights when local clocks hit 8:30pm. In the capital Warsaw, the spired landmark Palace of Culture and Science turned off its night illumination, along with some churches and Old Town walls.
WWF said people living today were the first generation to experience the effects of climate change and the last to be able to change it. Lights were also switched off in several landmarks in the Greek capital. The Acropolis, Athens City Hall and Lycabettus Hill, towering above the Athens centre, went dark and the parliament building joined in. However, calls by the mayor of Athens for citizens to join in by turning off the lights in their houses went mostly unheeded.
The charity is encouraging people to pledge personal actions as part of this year’s Earth Hour, such as turning the washing machine down to 30C (86F), avoiding single-use plastics, planning a staycation, changing the way they eat or helping restore nature in their local area. The Empire State Building in New York was planning to participate in Earth Hour at 8.30pm local time (12.30am GMT).
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