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Earth Hour - climate change campaigners urge global switch-off

26 March 2010 20:14 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. The fourth annual lights-out event expects 1 billion participants, and counts for the first time international landmarks including the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State building and the Burj Khalifa, APA reports quoting â€œThe Guardianâ€ newspaper.
The biggest turn-off in human history will start at 8.30pm tomorrow in Chatham, a tiny South Pacific island with only 12 street lamps.
Almost 25 hours later, but at 9.30pm the same day, it will finish on the other side of the international dateline in the Galapagos Islands, where scientists at the Charles Darwin Research Station will share a candle-lit dinner with several hundred locals and environmental activists.
In between, Earth Hour â€“ the annual worldwide call for action against climate change â€“ will spread darkness across all seven continents, drawing in 120 nations, 1,700 municipalities and hundreds of millions of people, including supermodels, archbishops, and footballers.
In the UK, many hotels and restaurants will be offering special candle-lit dinners where guests will be able to watch well-known sites plunge into blackness, including Big Ben, Edinburgh Castle, Wales’s Millennium Stadium, Belfast City Hall, Durham Cathedral, St Paul’s Cathedral and the London Eye.
Now in its fourth year, the event organised by the World Wide Fund for Nature, has spread an ever-widening expanse of hour-long darkness. Two million people took part at the first switch-off in Sydney in 2007. Last year, hundreds of millions participated in 88 countries. This year, organisers expect the figure to be close to a billion.
Beijing’s Forbidden City and London’s Houses of Parliament, the Eiffel Tower, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, the Empire State Building, Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer statue, and the world’s tallest building, Burj Khalifa. will all plunge into darkness.
Nations that have signed up for the first time this year include Saudi Arabia â€“ long seen as resistant to climate change action â€“ Mongolia, Nepal and the Czech Republic.
Another debutant is a first group of participants from Antarctica: the Davis Research Station, which is home to several dozen scientists who presumably will not be also switching off their heaters in -10 degrees Celsius.
James Leape, the director general of the WWF, said the worldwide event was particularly important after the disappointment of the climate conference in Copenhagen last year.
"There was a sense after Copenhagen that we, as a world, had lost momentum," he told the Guardian. "One of the important things about this year is that it is a chance for people to say ’Hey, we are still concerned about climate change.’ A lot of people are looking for an opportunity. If they speak out by themselves, it may not make much of an impact, but through this shared action of Earth Hour, they have a platform to speak."
Leape is in Beijing to attend a darkening ceremony at the Forbidden City, the 600-year-old symbol of Chinese power.
Last year, China’s support for Earth Hour was conflicted by the timing of the event, which coincided with the anniversary of the Tibetan unrest in 2008, prompting some organisations â€“ including Peking university - to warn students not to get involved.
This year, with no such complications, participation is enthusiastic. Fifteen Chinese cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Dalian, have signed up. Pandas in Sichuan will be involved, along with cartoon characters in Hong Kong, and rock bands in Xiamen. Chinese organisers are using the event to kick-off a "low-carbon lifestyle week" aimed at persuading consumers in the world’s most populous country not to follow the wasteful example of developed nations.
The message is catching on at the grassroots. Among the events in the former Chinese capital of Xian, will be a free unplugged music concert.
Across the world, people are expected to mark the event in ways that reflect the diversity, creativity and inequality of the human population. In cities like Tokyo, Seoul and New York, netizens are being asked to record the switch-off of landmark buildings on their mobile phones and upload them online. In Zimbabwe, hundreds of children will join a candle-lit picnic at Victoria Falls. In Canada, an Earth Hour Blackberry application has proved a hit. Elsewhere, the world’s highest paid supermodel, Gisele BÃ¼ndchen and World Cup-winning footballer Francesco Totti will act as spokespeople for the event, along with South Africa’s archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Not everywhere is going dark. Tanzania initially did not sign up because few would notice a switch off in Dar es Salaam and other cities where only 10% of people have electricity. Instead, WWF organised a "switch on" of solar energy for a local school last year. It will scale this up to 20 schools this year.
In Madagascar, 99% of the country has no electricity and people are frightened to be on the streets after dark because of the instability that has followed the political crisis. But WWF say locals have asked to participate.
"There are only 12 street lights on the Chatham Islands and for safety reasons these will remain on," said Pickles. Organisers said locals would enjoy making the news, but the event would have to compete with a 21st birthday party at the one hotel in town.
"A lot of people will be there," said Lee Barry, Earth Hour Project Manager in New Zealand. "Hopefully someone will remember to turn the lights off."