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