Famous monuments and skyscrapers in the world’s major cities have gone dark to shed a light on climate change. The annual Earth Hour event is set to take place in over 7,000 cities across 24 time zones on Saturday.
Cities around the world turned off their lights for an hour on Saturday to as part of the World Wide Fund for Nature’s (WWF) annual Earth Hour campaign.
Millions of people have taken part in the tenth annual climate awareness-raising event, which has grown significantly since it began in Sydney, Australia in 2007.
“From one city it has now grown to over 178 countries and territories and over 7,000 cities so we couldn’t be happier about how millions of people across the world are coming together for climate action,” Earth Hour’s global executive director Siddarth Das told news agency AFP via telephone.
Das added that support for climate action is on the rise following the wake of the global climate talks in Paris last year. The so-called Paris Agreement seeks to limit global warming to “well below” two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels, with a more ambitious target of 1.5C if possible.
More than 350 monuments such as the Eiffel Tower, Taipei 101, the Empire State Building, and the Brandenburg Gate were set to go dark for 60 minutes at 8:30 p.m. local time on Saturday.
World celebrates Earth Hour
Cities on Australia’s east coast were some of the first to turn off their lights on Saturday. Sydney’s famous Opera House and Harbor Bridge, usually brightly lit, went dark for 60 minutes for the tenth year in a row.
Prior to lights out in Singapore, hundreds of people stood in a yoga tree pose in an attempt to break a world record:
Supporters around the world will turn off lights in their homes and attend local climate change events as part of the world-wide show of solidarity for Mother Nature.
rs/jm (AFP, Reuters)
