AUSTRALIA: Sydney finds climate change a real turn off

Sydney landmarks turned off their lights for an hour on Saturday (March 31), throwing famous buildings such as the Sydney Opera House into darkness as part of a campaign to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Restaurants set candle-lit dinners, the iconic harbour bridge was dimmed, the city's tallest building offered special tours on an open-air skywalk and the Sydney Youth Orchestra began its first concert of the year in darkness. Around the city, hundreds of businesses and more than 50,000 homes signed up for the night, while parties and star-gazing events were planned along the harbour. The one-hour power-down was designed to raise awareness of carbon emissions to combat global warming, and is part of a campaign to have Sydney cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 5 percent over the next year. "A lot of companies seem to be taking it seriously but hotels have their lights switched on quiet a lot, in the distance there, those two buildings are hotels and seems a lot of people there left their energy on, but it seems to be successful I think," said a man who turned up to see the blackout. Not everything in the city came to a halt, though. Essential lights were kept on for safety reasons, while a view over the Sydney skyline showed it was dimmed but not darkened. Street lights remained on. "I think, no I don't think it is successfully run, because for me earth hour if every lights turned off you actually don't have lights and as you can see I am here with lights, so I don't think it is successfully run, no I don't," one women said. WWF (World Wildlife Fund) Australia said they hoped the event would spread to other parts of Australia and could eventually be taken up globally. And this idea already has some supporters. "I think some people started to do things, and I think it is something that should rerun regularly until everybody gets the message," said one woman. And for people who didn't want to turn off all their power, local television offered "live coverage" of the event. WWF said it would work out after the event how much power was saved.

ITN Source | March 31, 2007

Tags:. .globally. .signed. .along. .until. .taken