Lights Out! Welsh Capital Cardiff Joins List of World Class Cities Leading Symbolic Fight Against Climate Change

[Pictured above: Welsh Assembly Building (Senedd)Photo at BBC.]

The BBC NEWS reports on the Welsh Capital City of Cardiff:

Lights were turned off at Welsh Assembly Government offices across the nation on Saturday night as part of a worldwide climate change campaign.

It went dark in main government buildings between 2000 and 2100 GMT on Saturday to support "Earth Hour".

The symbolic campaign was launched last year in Sydney, Australia, and 24 cities are taking part on Saturday.


[Pictured above: The Welsh Capital City of Cardiff joined other major world cities in the global 'Lights Out' event, including San Francisco, California, pictured above.]


Additionally from the newswires:

Cardiff to black out for an hour
26/3/2008

Cardiff Council is throwing its support behind a global initiative to turn off the lights for an hour on Saturday, March 29.

Earth Hour was conceived by WWF (formerly the World Wildlife Fund) to deliver a powerful message about the need for urgent action on global warming.

Earth Hour uses the simple action of turning off lights for one hour and was pioneered last year by WWF-Australia in Sydney when 2.2 million people and 2,100 Sydney businesses turned off their lights.

This massive collective effort reduced Sydney's energy consumption by 10.2 per cent for one hour, which is the equivalent effect of taking 48,000 cars off the road for a year.

Following Sydney's lead, cities around the world have already signed up to encourage residents and businesses to turn off their lights for an hour from 8pm to 9pm on March 29.

And Cardiff will be joining some of the world's major capital cities, including Copenhagen, Toronto, Chicago, Melbourne, Brisbane, Tel Aviv, Bangkok and San Francisco, in calling on people to turn off non essential lights for an hour.


[Pictured above: Lights Out London.]

Lights out London

Councillor Mark Stephens, Executive member for Economic Development and Finance, said:

"Cardiff Council is happy to support WWF's Earth Hour initiative and is calling on all residents and businesses to show their backing for this initiative and turn off their lights for an hour on March 29.


[Pictured above: Councillor Mark Stephens.]

"Cardiff Council has consistently demonstrated its commitment to the environment and this follows on from our involvement with the Carbon Trust and our aim to reduce by 60 per cent the authority's carbon emissions from non domestic buildings and waste by 2018."

Councillor Simon Wakefield, Executive member for Environment and Transport, added: "The Council has a vision for the future of Cardiff which embraces Cardiff as a Green Capital.


[Pictured above: Councillor Simon Wakefield.]

We are very happy to be involved in WWF's Earth Hour initiative and hope that the messages it promotes will help make a difference globally. I urge everyone in the city to try and make a difference for this one hour."

Morgan Parry, Head of WWF Cymru said: "We are delighted to see Cardiff Council set an example to the rest of Wales by helping the capital become among one of the first British cities to get involved in turning off all non-essential lighting for Earth Hour.


[Pictured above: Morgan Parry.]

"Earth Hour will send a strong, symbolic signal that people all around the world are deeply concerned about climate change and expect their political leaders and businesses to take action before it's too late," says Morgan Parry.

"Climate change is a global challenge that requires global solutions and Earth Hour is making it clear to those in power that people across the world are ready to get involved."

Source: http://www.newswales.co.uk/?section=Environment&F=1&id=13696

The University of Glamorgan also led the way with participation iun the event, even though most building on both the Treforest and Cardiff ATRiuM campuses were mostly vacant, due to the long Easter Holidays:

Here's a directive sent to staff members:

Lights Out in 2008
March 27, 2008

Staff at the University are being encouraged to support

Lights out South Wales.

The initiative is designed to encourage iconic buildings, organisations and businesses as well as households, to switch off non-essential lights on Saturday 29th March at 8pm, to demonstrate support for a Global Switch Off.

This year, the event has gone global and many cities, including

Cardiff

are joining in. The Global switch off, Earth Hour, is a WWF initiative asking people to turn their lights off for one hour. It starts in Sydney and will follow the time zones around the world.

Clearly, the majority of us won’t be on the University’s campuses on Saturday, but to show support, we’d like to encourage you to switch off any lights or PC equipment before you leave on Friday evening.

Look out for the Environmental Update in the next issue of Bulletin, due out shortly.

BBC NEWS: Assembly goes dark for Earth Hour

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