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It’s for the Earth

The Earth Hour allegedly began in Sydney, where all the lights were turned ‘off’ for an hour on the last Saturday of March, in 2007. Today, this initiative is global and adopted by many cities worldwide. But this proposal was not unique; it was based on an idea successfully adopted in Thailand in 2005. Even San Francisco had its own version of an Earth Hour, the ‘Lights Out’ program, usually held in October, before the Sydney enterprise in 2007. But the scale, at which the event was promoted and endorsed in Sydney, mainly by the WWF Australia and the Sydney Morning Herald, brought worldwide attention. Since the aims were the same and the idea similar, rather than compete, in 2008 San Francisco too joined the other participating cities in March, bringing up the total to 35 cities.

This year, the program has garnered more support. Close to a billion people, in 75 countries have pledged support and 930 cities have adopted the undertaking to ‘Turn off the lights’ for an hour; including Delhi and Mumbai. In Mumbai, the Mayor Dr Shubha Raul, popular Bollywood actor, Amir Khan, local governments of Delhi and Mumbai, corporate houses like HP, Wipro, HSBC, Tetra Pak, CB Richard Ellis, ITC Welcom Group, Standard Chartered, Nokia, Google, Yes Bank, Intel, PVR Cinemas, The Taj Group, Welcom Heritage, Tata Indicom, Aircel, Canon, Satya Paul, ICICI and Fairwood Consultants have also endorsed it.

With the global climate negotiations to be held in December 2009, this year the WWF are keen that the program is an outstanding success worldwide, at least in key cities, to highlight the voice and support of the general public for a meaningful policy on climate change.

And not only governments and corporate houses, each citizen can add their little bit, every household in any city can contribute. Everyone can make a difference. Act now. It’s just the flick of the switch!

For further information log on to http://www.earthhour.org/ or http://earthhour.in

Earth Hour is being observed on Saturday (March 28), local time 8:30 pm.

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