Lights went out at landmarks across New Zealand on Saturday as the 20th Earth Hour began. The annual event marked two decades since it started in Australia in 2006 and asks people and institutions to switch off their lights for one hour to draw attention to climate change.
Participants range from private homes and businesses to iconic international monuments. Among the first to go dark at 8:30 p.m. local time were Auckland’s Sky Tower and New Zealand’s parliament building in Wellington. Other major sites scheduled to dim included the Sydney Opera House, Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate and New York’s Empire State Building.
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which organizes Earth Hour, reported that more than 3 million hours were pledged across 118 countries and territories last year. WWF says the event remains important after 20 years because the climate crisis continues to worsen other global challenges and risks being pushed out of the public spotlight.
Viviane Raddatz, head of climate at WWF Germany, said the aim of Earth Hour is to bring climate action back into public view and elevate it on the political agenda, noting that although attention can shift among competing crises, the climate emergency persists and intensifies many of those problems.
Edited by: Dmytro Hubenko