Earth Hour - Earth Always

18 May 2007

Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP today called on the world to make a stand against global warming and follow Sydney's lead by making Earth Hour a global event in future years.

Ms Moore encouraged Mayors at the C40 Large Cities Climate Summit in New York to embrace Earth Hour and empower the community to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The summit, involving Mayors representing more than 250 million people in many of the world's largest cities, is a global opportunity to address climate change.

"At the City of Sydney, Earth Hour has now become Earth Always. Sydney is the first global city to blaze with fireworks for the New Year and next March, we want to be the first in a chain of cities to turn out the lights in a signal of our united commitment to a sustainable planet," Ms Moore said.

The Earth Hour project, embraced by the Sydney community, was initiated by WWF Australia and the Fairfax Media group, and was strongly supported by the City of Sydney.

On the evening of March 31 Sydneysiders were asked to switch off their lights and appliances for just one hour, with more than two million citizens and two thousand of the biggest corporations in Australia taking part.

"We were aiming for a five per cent reduction in power usage, and we achieved more than 10 per cent, the equivalent of taking 48,000 cars off the CBD's roads for one hour," Ms Moore said.

"People came into the streets, they flocked to the Sydney Observatory to go star-gazing, they held picnics in their local parks or candlelit dinners with friends."

"Earth Hour is about consciousness-raising, about capturing people's imaginations and empowering them to make a difference. Sydney's Earth Hour showed that, co-operatively, we can make a difference."

"The biggest impediment we face is not the lack of new technologies to tackle climate change - it's a lack of political will."

The City's existing Green CBD program to help companies "green" their buildings - not for an hour, but permanently - was given an enormous boost by Earth Hour, with more than 30 companies signed up for the program.

Ms Moore also praised a proposal similar to the Green CBD program announced by The Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) at the summit to encourage companies to green their buildings. Former US President Bill Clinton announced the creation of his global Energy Efficiency Building Retrofit Program involving energy service companies, banks and sixteen of the world's largest cities working together to reduce energy consumption in existing buildings.

"The Green CBD Greenhouse Initiative is reducing the impact of our commercial office tenancies and involves some of Sydney's largest companies," Ms Moore said.

Instead of waiting 20 - 50 years for old buildings to be replaced, the Green CBD program delivers greenhouse gas reductions through simple measures and tenancy fit-outs during lease turnovers."

Cities are responsible for three-quarters of the world's energy consumption, and as such, the world's largest cities have a critical role to play in the reduction of carbon emissions and the reversal of dangerous climate change.

MEDIA CONTACTS:
Jeff Lewis
+61 (0)401 994 008
jlewis@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au

Mark Scala
+61 (0)414 746 651
mscala@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au

Related Resources

Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP at the C40 Climate Summit in New York


ANNOUNCEMENTS

• C40 Climate Summit - summary
• C40 Climate Summit - EARTH HOUR PRESENTATION
• Sydney's Green CBD (3CBDs) on world stage
• Earth Hour - Earth Always

• C40 Climate Summit - WATER PANEL PRESENTATION

MULTIMEDIA

Streetfilms video
Lord Mayor Clover Moore of Sydney and Copenhagen's Mayor of the Technical & Environmental Administration Klaus Bondam in New York

IMAGES


Clover Moore and Bill Clinton.jpg (2MB)
Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP and former US President Bill Clinton at the C40 Climate Summit in New York