wild places | wild happenings | wild news
make a difference for our wild places

home | links | search the site
  all articles latest | past | articles by topics | search wildnews
wild news on wildsingapore
  Yahoo News 1 Apr 07
Sydney's blackout hailed a success

Yahoo News 31 Mar 07
Sydney blackout puts spotlight on global warming
by Neil Sands

Yahoo News 31 Mar 07
Sydney blacks out for global warming
By Rohan Sullivan

BBC 31 Mar 07
Sydney in climate change blackout
David Strahan

Lights have been turned off across Australia's largest city, Sydney, in a hour-long event aimed at raising awareness of global warming. At 1930 (0930 GMT) the city's skyline dimmed and normally bright landmarks like the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge went dark.

The so-called Earth Hour is supported by the New South Wales government, environmental groups and businesses.

Sydney hopes the event will make a very big statement on climate change. The city of four million people is aiming to become the first anywhere to achieve a blackout on this scale.

The BBC's Phil Mercer, in Sydney, says by and large Sydney had never been this dark. He says lights were off in the majority of the central business district's office blocks and large parts of the suburbs were also in darkness.

Co-operation

Greg Bourne of environmental group WWF, one of the driving forces behind Earth Hour, said the big switch off took months to plan. "The logistics is really quite amazing in the sense every tower block is owned by one company, maybe leased by another company, have 10 tenants in and a manager and working through all of these people has been fantastic."

Many restaurants signed up and planned to serve diners by candlelight. The owner of the Newtown Hotel, which says it is Australia's oldest gay bar, told the BBC before the blackout that they would have fun while trying to send a serious message. "Sometimes drag queens [female impersonators] do look better in the dark anyway," said Roger Zee. "It's up to the patrons. They'll actually have their own torches so they'll be able to light up the drag queens on the stage themselves."

Organisers want to encourage Australians to conserve energy and to think carefully about what they can do to cut pollution.

Every day millions of lights and computers are left on in deserted office blocks as well as in apartments and houses. Campaigners have said that simply switching them off could reduce Sydney's greenhouse gas emissions by 5% over the next year.

Australia is one of the world's largest per capita producers of carbon dioxide and other gases that many scientists believe are helping to warm the earth's atmosphere.

A selection of your comments

We turned our household lights off for Earth Hour, although realistically it didn't make any difference to the amount of greenhouse gases generated. I think most Sydneysiders saw Earth Hour as a way of expressing our growing awareness of the need to do something about the factors contributing to climate change rather than a 'fix' for any part of the problem. To that extent, it was a success.
Phil Keeffe, Sydney, Australia

Why doesn't John Howard and his Premiers sign up to Kyoto instead of pulling off publicity stunts. Perhaps this will get the residents of Australia to think and put pressure on their 'leaders' to do so. Andrew, Brisbane (soon to be Edinburgh) Have we already forgotten that Paris tried this too on the occasion of the International Panel on Climate Change conference just a month ago? The Eiffel tower lights went off, but most ordinary people did nothing. At least for Paris we got numbers on the amount of power saved. What for Sydney?
Robert Cailliau, Prevessin, France

Well done Sydney! Every city should follow. I am not that old and I remember when public lights in cities were off from 11pm to 6am! gerome mortelecque, Toronto Canada One hour? how much difference will that make to climate change.
adrian, ashby de la zouch

Kudos to Sydney! Hong Kong made a similar attempt last year but unlike its counterpart in New South Wales, the government refused to participate in the campaign, claiming that it would give "adverse publicity to Hong Kong as an international metropolis". Let's hope that the precedent set by Sydney will help persuade other cities, and their governments, to follow suit.
C. Chan, Hong Kong

It's true. Sydney has never been so dark. Fantastic! Thank you to WWF for organising such an event. Australian's are cyring out for ways to get involved and make a difference. Kath Eggleston, Sydney I live in Sydney and I can assure you that the 'blackout' didn't happen. The lights on the bridge and opera house were turned off but the publicity stunt was completely ignored by the vast majority of ordinary people here. The vast majority of people here did not turn off their lights.
Nick Mallory, Sydney

Amazing! Very glad to hear of something like this happening. Mr. Mallory, even if most people didn't turn of their lights, I'm sure you would agree that the 'stunt' at least got the world talking and citizens of other large cities wanting/working towards something similar. Nicely done Sydney!
Raj Trivedi, Houston, Texas USA

Good on the Aussies! Why isn't every country doing this??? Lee, Bournemouth I'd like to commend Australia for taking such a bold initiative. One can only imagine the scale of positive impact this can have if all the world's major cities observed voluntary blackouts even for a few minutes if not hours.
Adithya Hanbal, Michigan, USA


Yahoo News 31 Mar 07
Sydney blackout puts spotlight on global warming
by Neil Sands

Australia's largest city was plunged into darkness for an hour Saturday night as Sydney underwent a self-imposed blackout to raise awareness of global warming. Residents and businesses across the city of four million flicked off the lights for "Earth Hour" at 7:30 pm (0930 GMT).

Tourists had to view the famous Sydney Opera House by moonlight, while the Harbour Bridge's steel span and the clown's face of the waterside Luna Park fairground were also blacked out. The neon on a huge blinking Coca-Cola advertising hoarding in Sydney's Kings Cross nightclub district flickered off for the first time since it was installed in 1974.

Restaurants served diners by candlelight and pupils attended schools for special Earth Hour parties. The Newtown Hotel, which bills itself as Australia's oldest gay pub, even organised a special drag show where the audience were handed mini-torches to light up performers' sequins. Many of Australia's biggest companies signed up for the event, with local McDonald's restaurants turning off the "golden arches" for the occasion.

WWF believes the switch-off could be copied by major cities around the world in a drive to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change.

Oscar-winning Australian actress Cate Blanchett described Earth Hour as a beginning. "It's an hour of active, thoughtful darkness, a celebration of our awakening to climate change action," she said.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which has spent 10 months organising the event with city authorities and a major newspaper group, said there had been a massive groundswell of support across the city. WWF Australia spokesman Andy Ridley said the city got behind the initiative.

"It was extraordinary," he said. "The levels of support we had was huge. Seeing the city in darkness was an amazing sight."

He said the event was aimed at raising awareness about climate change and showing that an action as simple as turning out a light could make a difference.

"It's only by joining together that you can make a difference," he said. "The world has moved into a time where we see climate change as a serious risk but we want people to realise that it's not all doom and gloom, individuals can take action to help address the problem.

"One of the things about Earth Hour is really to get the issue out of the scientific and specialist areas and into the mainstream."

Ridley said WWF hoped to capitalise on the popularity of the event in the longer term with a campaign to reduce Sydney's greenhouse gas emissions by five percent over the next year. Scientists link dangerous global temperature increases to the greenhouse effect, in which gases emitted by burning fossil fuels to produce energy trap heat in the atmosphere.

Organisers say there are a number of simple steps people can take to reduce electricity use, including unplugging appliances such as televisions, microwave ovens and stereos that are normally left on standby. Other suggestions include switching to fluorescent light bulbs -- a move the Australian government committed to earlier this year -- and using "green" power sources such as solar.

Yahoo News 31 Mar 07
Sydney blacks out for global warming
By Rohan Sullivan, Associated Press Writer

The Sydney Opera House's gleaming white-shelled roof was darkened Saturday night along with much of the rest of Australia's largest city, which switched off the lights to register concern about global warming.

The arch of Sydney's other iconic structure, the harbor bridge, was also blacked out, along with dozens of skyscrapers and countless homes in the 4 million-strong city, in an hour-long gesture organizers said they hoped would be adopted as an annual event by cities around the world.

Mayor Clover Moore, whose officials shut down all nonessential lights on city-owned buildings, said Sydney was "asking people to think about what action they can take to fight global warming."

Restaurants throughout the city held candlelit dinners, and families gathered in public places to take part in a countdown to lights out, sending up a cheer as lights started blinking off at 7:30 p.m.

Buildings went dark one by one. Some floors in city skyscrapers remained lit, and security and street lights, those at commercial port operations and at a sports stadium, stayed on.

"It's an hour of active, thoughtful darkness, a celebration of our awakening to climate change action," said Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett, who attended a harborside function to watch the event.

While downtown was significantly darker than normal, the overall effect, as seen in television footage from overhead helicopters, was that the city's patchwork of millions of tiny lights had thinned, not disappeared.

"We were expecting a big difference straight away, but it was just a little bit," said Sonja Schollen, who took sons Harry and James to a park to watch the skyline, joining dozens of other families. Children waved glo-sticks and sparklers while parents picnicked and sipped wine. "It was quite sweet, actually, because the kids started chanting `turn them out, turn them out.' You can see now the city's a bit dimmer," she said toward the end of the hour.

Organizers hope Saturday's event — which about 2,000 businesses and more than 60,000 individuals signed up for online — will get people to think about regularly switching off nonessential lights, powering down computers and other simple measures they say could cut Sydney's greenhouse gas emissions by 5 percent this year.

The amount of power saved by Saturday's event was not immediately known. But Greg Bourne, chief executive of World Wildlife Fund Australia and one of the architects of the event, said Sydney's power supplier Energy Australia had estimated it could be 5 percent of normal usage on a night of similar conditions.

"It's absolutely fantastic, there's a mood of enthusiasm and hopefulness and action," Bourne said. "I have never seen Sydney's skyline look so dark."

Research by the University of New South Wales published last week found Sydney residents have bad energy conservation habits, often leaving heaters and air conditioners running in empty rooms.

Leaked excerpts published in Australian media last week said average temperatures in the country could rise 6.7 degrees by 2080, making worse wildfires, floods, drought and storms.

The Great Barrier Reef is already under threat from increased coral bleaching, the report says. Australia, a nation of around 21 million people, is ranked as the world's worst greenhouse gas emitter per capita, largely because of its heavy reliance on coal-fired power stations.

Global warming has emerged this year as a mainstream political issue in Australia, and Prime Minister John Howard's government has announced initiatives such as the phased withdrawal from sale of energy-inefficient incandescent bulbs to blunt criticism of his refusal to sign the Kyoto protocol.

Sydney is not the first place to cut the lights for conservation. In February, Paris and other parts of France dimmed the lights for five minutes in a similar gesture, which also took hold in Rome and Athens.

Yahoo News 1 Apr 07
Sydney's blackout hailed a success

Organisers behind a campaign that saw Sydney impose a one-hour blackout to focus attention to global warming hailed it as a success for taking the equivalent of nearly 50,000 cars off the road.

Energy Australia said the event -- which saw the lights switched off on the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House and in 65,000 homes and 2,000 businesses -- had cut normal energy use by an estimated 10.2 percent.

Sydney switched off at 7:30 pm Saturday (0930 GMT) as residents and firms joined "Earth Hour" to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which organised what it called a world first event, said discussions would now take place to take the concept national.

"We would have thought about a five percent reduction would have been a good result, but we've seen a reduction of over 10 percent," a spokesman for Energy Australia spokesman said. "That's a tremendous result."

"What people would have learnt from this is that energy efficiency is quite simple -- it's as simple as flicking a switch."

Giving comparisons, Energy Australia said that the 25,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide saved was equivalent to taking 48,613 cars off the road for an hour. The saving of more than 20,000 kilowatt hours of energy was enough to power 200,000 televisions for 60 minutes, it added.

A spokeswoman for WWF said it was "desperately happy and relieved."

"We set out to prove the fact that individual action collectively looks like this," she told Australian Associated Press.

"On a range of environmental actions that we need to take -- energy efficiency and water efficiency -- individual action is the key, and this has shown what it can do. It's pretty spectacular when you get to prove that."

Scientists link dangerous increases in global temperature to the greenhouse effect, in which gases emitted by burning fossil fuels to produce energy trap heat in the atmosphere.
links
Earth Hour website
Related articles on Global: general issues
about the site | email ria
  News articles are reproduced for non-profit educational purposes.
 

website©ria tan 2003 www.wildsingapore.com