Over one billion people around the world will switch off light and electrical appliances tonight, March 26th, on the last Saturday of this month. They will thus join the Earth Hour international event to save energy and other natural resources. Let these 60 minutes in the dark help the world to see light, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a comment on the event.
Hearth Hour is held by the World Wildlife Foundation, WWF, and brings together people who wish to protect the environment. This will be the third time that Earth Hour has been held in Russia, says a WWF official Alexei Kokorin in an interview with the Voice of Russia, and elaborates.
We need this hour, Alexei Kokorin says, to give it a thought just how much energy and warmth we are thoughtlessly and unjustifiably using throughout the year, and how well it would be for our family budget to cut down on that unnecessary amount. From a wider perspective, we should come to think of unrestrained consumption. Surveys have been conducted in different countries on the number of people who see themselves as happy, and their consumption amounts in dollars, euros and roubles were also cited. As a matter of fact, people’s happiness and their incomes turned out to be totally unrelated. And last but not least, by asking people to switch off the lights we by no means seek to deprive them of something they need, but only request them to put out the least effective and unnecessary lights. But we simultaneously urge them to use most up-to-date and state-of-the-art light-emitting diodes that consume dozens of times less energy. This is yet another message by the Earth Hour event.
Decorative lighting will go out for one hour at more than 75 facilities in Moscow on the 26th of March, including the lighting of the City Council building on Novy Arbat Street, of Moscow State University on Sparrow Hills, or Vorobyovy Gory; of the Kiev Railway Station, the Shukhov radio tower on Shabolovka Street, and the sport arenas and Palace of Sports at Moscow’s Luzhniki district. This Saturday, lectures on ecology are due to be delivered, as well as competition held and master-classes offered at the Russian capital’s parks. Meanwhile the World Wildlife Foundation is due to screen a film for schoolchildren at the Ecocentre on Sparrow Hills about global ecological problems and ways to settle them. Once lights go out at 8:30 p.m. schoolchildren will be treated to tea at candlelight at a site by the Ecocentre, and enjoy actors’ performance, and will also take part in a bike ride using LED lamps.
Earth Hour was first held in Australia in 2007, but it spread to quite a few nations the very next year. 128 countries took part in the event in 2010. Moscow alone saved some 3,000 Megawatts of electrical energy as a result of the event.