Tag: earth hour

Turn OFF your lights – 8–9pm tomorrow (Saturday)

Sup­port the Earth Hour ini­ti­at­ive tomor­row (Sat 28th) and turn off your lights between 8pm-9pm.

But it will be dark!
I know … fun eh!? Light candles, play spooky games (I recom­mend Were­wolf) or tell ghost stor­ies – in essence HAVE FUN!

And it’s not just about the lights, that’s the min­im­um. If you can turn off any­thing else then do so – how about turn­ing off the com­puter!!!

More info:

• Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil press release
• New Zea­l­and ‘Earth Hour’ Google news search …
• Offi­cial Earth Hour site

And finally – how do we feel about Christ­ch­urch being the offi­cial New Zea­l­and Earth Hour rep … crap eh, it should be Wel­ling­ton!!

Write to both Kerry Pren­der­gast (May­or – kerry.prendergast@wcc.govt.nz) and Ray Ahipene-Mer­cer (Port­fo­lio Lead­er: Cli­mate Change – ray.ahipene-mercer@wcc.govt.nz) ask­ing for a big push for 2009 – think of the cov­er­age we’ll get inter­na­tion­ally, all because you all got behind it and asked!

Earth Hour (8pm , 29th March) – Wellington City Council press release

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.