AFP, Sydney, Australia :
From Sydney Opera House to the Eiffel tower in Paris and the Kremlin in Moscow, landmarks across the globe dimmed their lights on Saturday night for the 10th edition of the Earth Hour campaign calling for action on climate change.
Millions of people from 178 countries and territories were expected to take part in WWF’s Earth Hour this year, organizers said, with monuments and buildings such as Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate and the Empire State Building plunging into darkness for 60 minutes from 8:30 pm local time.
The annual event kicked off in Sydney, where the Earth Hour idea originated in 2007.
“We just saw the Sydney Harbor Bridge switch its lights off… and buildings around as well,” Earth Hour’s Australia manager Sam Webb told AFP from The Rocks area.
Earth Hour’s global executive director Siddarth Das said organizers were excited about how much the movement had grown since it began nine years ago.
“From one city it has now grown to over 178 countries and territories and over 7,000 cities, so we couldn’t be happier about how millions of people across the world are coming together for climate action,” he told AFP via telephone from Singapore ahead of the lights out.
