Earth Hour: Auckland goes dark for climate change

Earth Hour 2014 is celebrated in Singapore, where the event is headquartered. Photo / Supplied

This Saturday at 8:30pm, Auckland's Sky Tower will go dark for one hour. The switch-off will officially mark the beginning of the World Wildlife Fund's Earth Hour. Recognised by 7,000 cities, the 'lights off' initiative first began nine years ago in Sydney and aims to create a global community for a sustainable future.

The theme of this year's Earth Hour encourages participants to fight global warming, with the tagline: "Use #YourPower to Change Climate Change at earthhour.org."

In 2014, 162 countries participated in Earth Hour making it the world's largest mass participation event in history. Earth Hour Blue was also launched last year, the first crowd funding and crowd sourcing platform for the planet. In 2014, it raised over $61,000 for various environmental efforts across the world.

For 2015, the promotional video features world leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and international celebrities such as Emma Thompson calling for action against climate change to British indie rock band Bastille's hit single Pompeii.

Earth Hour not only promotes energy-saving practices with a symbolic blackout but it encourages people to go beyond the hour.

Other Earth Hour events planned for Saturday in New Zealand include a sustainable housing tour in Alexandra and the weekend-long Future Living Festival in Geraldine to promote eco-friendly lifestyles.

Earth Hour's 2002 "I will if you will" online video campaign lead 200,000 individuals to make one promise to live a greener lifestyle. In 2012, a digital petition launched by WWF-Russia collected over 122,000 signatures to pass a law protecting the country's oceans from oil pollution.

And the following year an Argentinean organisation harnessed the power of Earth Hour to pass legislation that would establish a 3.4 million hectare marine reserve.

Change inspired by Earth Hour 2014 was visible around the globe: education programs were unveiled in India and the United Kingdom to help schools become more energy-efficient, advocates lobbied for protection of the Great Barrier Reef and Amazon Rainforest, and thousands of trees in Uganda and Kazakhstan were planted. Hundreds of thousands of people signed petitions to protect endangered wildlife, protest a coal-powered plant in Greece, and pass legislation banning plastic bags in Galapagos. Crowdfunding initiatives generated thousands of dollars to provide fiberglass boats for those affected by the devastating typhoon in the Philippines, reduce deforestation in Nepal with the instalment of biogas stoves, curtail wildlife crimes in Southeast Asia, and contribute to other conservation projects.

Element Magazine is in direct content partnership with WWF. Check out the first article in this upcoming Monday's issue in the New Zealand Herald.

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