Last Saturday, March 25th, was a very special hour: from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. in each country, the lights were turned off to raise awareness about climate change . It was Earth Hour, 60 minutes that should be observed every day, because we are reaching a point where we are running out of space while polluting it.
But we're not going to talk about sad things, but rather about the wonderful photographs that March 25, 2017, left us. This is how the world looked that day.
Wat Arun Temple in Bangkok. Image - Ambito.com
Nearly 7000 cities in more than 150 countries participated in Earth Hour , an event organized by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) for the past 10 years. The event itself is simple: it consists of turning off the lights for one hour, but when millions of people do exactly that, the result can be spectacular. And so it was.
Brazil, Bangkok, Madrid, Bilbao, and many, many other cities have joined this major event, which has promised to be historic. This year, as has become customary, hundreds of iconic buildings, such as the Moscow Kremlin, were added to the list of those that went dark for an hour. Furthermore, if you want to learn more about the initiative, you can find out what Earth Hour is at this link.
Sydney (Australia). Image - David Gray
The first to celebrate were the Australians, who switched off the lights of the Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House , the city where this initiative began in 2007. At that time, it involved some 2000 businesses and 2,2 million people, but the following year there were 50 million participants from 35 countries. If you're interested in learning more about the long-term climate impact, you can read about how the temperature could rise between 2 and 5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century at this link.
And you, did you turn off the light?
