As prom­ised:

NEWS RELEASE
26 Feb­ru­ary 2008

Wel­ling­to­ni­ans encour­aged to turn off the lights for Earth Hour

Wel­ling­ton May­or Kerry Pren­der­gast is encour­aging Wel­ling­to­ni­ans to turn off their lights in sup­port of Earth Hour on Sat­urday 29 March.

Earth Hour, a World Wild­life Fund (WWF) ini­ti­at­ive aimed at fight­ing cli­mate change, was launched last week in Christ­ch­urch. While Christ­ch­urch is this year’s offi­cial host city for New Zea­l­and, Wel­ling­ton is eager to par­ti­cip­ate.

“Earth Hour is a fant­ast­ic way for Wel­ling­to­ni­ans to show their com­mit­ment to fight­ing cli­mate change. Every little bit helps and if we all turn off the lights for just one hour we all can make a dif­fer­ence. Wellington’s vis­ion is to become the first car­bon-neut­ral Cap­it­al in the world, we must do everything we can to make that vis­ion a reality,” she says.

“We will be sign­ing up as an offi­cial part­ner of WWF in this ini­ti­at­ive next year and put some resource behind it. This year we will be lead­ing by example and turn­ing off our lights, May­or Pren­der­gast says.

Earth Hour will begin at 8pm on Sat­urday, 29 March. It star­ted in Sydney last year and was a resound­ing suc­cess with the city’s energy usage drop­ping by 10 per­cent. Lights on fam­ous land­marks – the Sydney Opera House and Har­bour Bridge – were turned off for an hour and busi­nesses and res­id­ents joined in. This year cit­ies across Europe, North Amer­ica, Asia, Aus­tralia and New Zea­l­and are join­ing in.

Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil will register as a par­ti­cipant of Earth Hour and will look at what lights it can turn off. This could include the extern­al light­ing at swim­ming pools, lib­rar­ies, recre­ation centres and oth­er Coun­cil-owned build­ings and the lights in the trees in Ori­ent­al Bay and Civic Square.

Cli­mate Change Port­fo­lio lead­er Cr Ray Ahipene-Mer­cer says Earth Hour is a great way of show­ing how much we care about the plan­et.

“Safety will obvi­ously play a part in this and we will be keep­ing the street lights, traffic lights and oth­er essen­tial light­ing on dur­ing Earth Hour and obvi­ously there will be situ­ations where people need to keep their lights on, but we hope Wel­ling­to­ni­ans will get behind this great ini­ti­at­ive.”

To sign up to Earth Hour go to www.earthhour.org

For fur­ther details please con­tact:
Shar­on Willli­ams, Seni­or Com­mu­nic­a­tions Advisor, Office of the May­or, tel 801 3119 or mob 021 227 8517

Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil news releases are also avail­able daily as Web Alerts through the Coun­cil’s web­site, www.Wellington.govt.nz. To sub­scribe, select the Web Alerts icon on the home page.

Of course, not a men­tion of moi … ho hum