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8 September 2010 |
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Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP EARTH HOUR PRESENTATION This morning I want to tell you about Earth Hour in Sydney, where an entire city was mobilised to make a stand against global warming. And I want to enlist your help to make Earth Hour a global event in future years. The project was initiated by WWF Australia and the Fairfax Media group, and was strongly supported by the City of Sydney. But above all, it was supported by the people of Sydney who needed only the leadership and the opportunity to demonstrate their commitment towards solving our greatest global challenge. We'll see a brief video first, then I'll tell you a little more about Earth Hour. And I'll also introduce Andy Ridley from WWF Australia who can tell you more about the details of organising the event. Well, that gives you a taste of what Earth Hour was like in Sydney on the evening of March 31. As people on this side of the world were sipping their first coffees of the morning, Sydneysiders were being asked to switch off their lights and appliances for just one hour. The response was extraordinary. Two thousand of the biggest corporations in Australia switched off their lights. So did two million citizens - half the city's population. 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. 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. The cynics and the nay-sayers had said it would just provide a free go for burglars. It didn't. They said people wouldn't support it. They did. They said it wouldn't make a difference but it did. And they said, well it's only for one hour, and then we'll be back to our energy-guzzling business as usual. But Earth Hour is about consciousness-raising, about capturing people's imaginations and empowering them to make a difference. About reinforcing the message that it's how we live, what we do, and how we consume that can ensure a habitable earth for our children. Sydney's Earth Hour showed that, co-operatively, we can make a difference. Our existing program to help companies "green" their buildings - not for an hour, but permanently - was given an enormous boost, and more companies than ever have since signed up for the program. At the City of Sydney, Earth Hour has now become Earth Always, and the message is spreading. Because of its time-zone, Sydney is the first global city to blaze with fireworks for the New Year. Next March 31, 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. Join with us and together we can circle the world with a message of hope and a call to action. Leo Burnett International and PricewaterhouseCoopers have already pledged their support with WWF to help you participate. Andy Ridley has more detailed information for you today. More than half the world's population now lives in cities, so this is where we must develop new, greener ways of living. Cities and their citizens now drive the agendas of our nations. It is up to us, as civic leaders, to give our people the leadership they want and deserve. |
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Related ResourcesLord Mayor Clover Moore MP at the C40 Climate Summit in New York
MULTIMEDIA
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