The Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge went dark for an hour on Saturday, kicking off a global campaign raising awareness about the impact of climate change.
A combination photo shows the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House being plunged into darkness for the Earth Hour environmental campaign on March 24, 2018. The lights went out on two of Sydney's most famous landmarks for the 11th anniversary of the climate change awareness campaign Earth Hour, among the first landmarks around the world to dim their lights for the event. / AFP PHOTO / PETER PARKS
Earth Hour, which started in Australia in 2007, is set to be observed by millions of supporters in 187 countries, who will turn off their lights at 8.30 p.m. local time in what organisers describe as the world’s “largest grassroots movement for climate change”.
“It aims to raise awareness about the importance of protecting the environment and wildlife,” said Earth Hour organiser WWF Australia chief Dermot O’Gorman.
Other global landmarks that are part of the campaign include Beijing’s Bird’s Nest Olympic stadium, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Pyramids of Egypt and New York’s Empire State Building.
With global temperatures the highest on record, Mr. O’Gorman said this year’s theme was the impact of climate change on biodiversity and plant and animal species.
“More than half of plant and animal species face local extinction in some of the world’s most naturally rich areas in biodiversity by the turn of this century if we continue along the current path that we are trending in terms of global warming,” he said.
Species at risk include Australia’s green turtles, black-flanked rock wallabies and koalas, as well as the Adelie penguin colonies in Antarctica, the conservation group said in a report it commissioned that was published in the science journal Climatic Change .
The analysis, released last week, said key biodiverse sites around the world projected to be most affected by localised extinction include the Amazon, the plant’s largest tropical rainforest, and southern Africa’s Miombo Woodlands.
While the lights-off event is a symbolic gesture, Earth Hour has led successful campaigns over the past decade to ban plastics in the Galapagos Islands and plant 17 million trees in Kazakhstan.
