Sydney Blacks Out for Global Warming
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070331/D8O7AM980.html
[CSPP Note: ActivistsÕ primary goal: "It's absolutely fantastic,
there's a mood of enthusiasm and hopefulness and action," Bourne said.
"I have never seen Sydney's skyline look so dark." That about says it all.]
Mar 31, 2:39 PM (ET)
By ROHAN SULLIVAN
|
|||
|
|
SYDNEY,
Australia (AP) - The Sydney Opera House's gleaming white-shelled roof was
darkened Saturday night along with much of the rest of Australia's largest
city, which switched off the lights to register concern about global warming.
The arch of
Sydney's other iconic structure, the harbor bridge, was also blacked out, along
with dozens of skyscrapers and countless homes in the 4 million-strong city, in
an hour-long gesture organizers said they hoped would be adopted as an annual
event by cities around the world.
Mayor Clover
Moore, whose officials shut down all nonessential lights on city-owned
buildings, said Sydney was "asking people to think about what action they
can take to fight global warming."
Restaurants
throughout the city held candlelit dinners, and families gathered in public
places to take part in a countdown to lights out, sending up a cheer as lights
started blinking off at 7:30 p.m.
|
Buildings
went dark one by one. Some floors in city skyscrapers remained lit, and
security and street lights, those at commercial port operations and at a sports
stadium, stayed on.
"It's an
hour of active, thoughtful darkness, a celebration of our awakening to climate
change action," said Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett, who attended a
harborside function to watch the event.
While
downtown was significantly darker than normal, the overall effect, as seen in
television footage from overhead helicopters, was that the city's patchwork of
millions of tiny lights had thinned, not disappeared.
"We were
expecting a big difference straight away, but it was just a little bit,"
said Sonja Schollen, who took sons Harry and James to a park to watch the
skyline, joining dozens of other families. Children waved glo-sticks and
sparklers while parents picnicked and sipped wine.
"It was
quite sweet, actually, because the kids started chanting 'turn them out, turn
them out.' You can see now the city's a bit dimmer," she said toward the
end of the hour.
|
Organizers
hope Saturday's event - which about 2,000 businesses and more than 60,000
individuals signed up for online - will get people to think about regularly
switching off nonessential lights, powering down computers and other simple
measures they say could cut Sydney's greenhouse gas emissions by 5 percent this
year.
The amount of
power saved by Saturday's event was not immediately known. But Greg Bourne,
chief executive of World Wildlife Fund Australia and one of the architects of
the event, said Sydney's power supplier Energy Australia had estimated it could
be 5 percent of normal usage on a night of similar conditions.
"It's
absolutely fantastic, there's a mood of enthusiasm and hopefulness and
action," Bourne said. "I have never seen Sydney's skyline look so
dark."
Research by
the University of New South Wales published last week found Sydney residents have
bad energy conservation habits, often leaving heaters and air conditioners
running in empty rooms.
Leaked
excerpts published in Australian media last week said average temperatures in
the country could rise 6.7 degrees by 2080, making worse wildfires, floods,
drought and storms. The Great Barrier Reef is already under threat from
increased coral bleaching, the report says.
Australia, a
nation of around 21 million people, is ranked as the world's worst greenhouse
gas emitter per capita, largely because of its heavy reliance on coal-fired
power stations.
Global
warming has emerged this year as a mainstream political issue in Australia, and
Prime Minister John Howard's government has announced initiatives such as the
phased withdrawal from sale of energy-inefficient incandescent bulbs to blunt
criticism of his refusal to sign the Kyoto protocol.
Sydney is not
the first place to cut the lights for conservation. In February, Paris and
other parts of France dimmed the lights for five minutes in a similar gesture,
which also took hold in Rome and Athens.