Earth Hour 2014 in Dubai
This Saturday, Mar. 29, Dubai will celebrate Earth Hour by shutting off the electricity in its skyline from 8:30pm to 9:30pm. Earth Hour, which has been celebrated in Dubai since 2008, was founded as a means to demonstrate the importance of energy conservation as well as humans’ collective power to make an impact.
Reem Al Thawadi, from Emirates Wildlife Society (the organizing body behind Earth Hour in the UAE) said:
“People often ask me, ‘what does one hour do for the environment?’ But the idea of Earth Hour is a demonstration of what we can do when we put our minds together – as darkness encompasses the cities every hour it shows that if we put our minds to something we can actually do it. It’s not just the energy saving in the hour, it’s the symbolic action behind it. The goal of Earth Hour is to get a movement going – not for just one hour, or one event.”
Just in the past few years, Earth Hour has seen exponential growth in participation. In 2012, more than 6,950 cities across 152 countries participated in the event. In 2013, it expanded to over 7,000 cities internationally.
Landmarks across the world participated, symbolically shutting off power at The Sydney Harbour Bridge, Tokyo Tower, Bejing National Stadium, Church of the Nativity (birthplace of Jesus in Bethlehem), Eiffel Tower, the Acropolis, Tower of Pisa, Brandenburg Gate, Buckingham Palace, UK House of Parliament, Big Ben, Las Vegas Strip, Times Square, the Empire State Building, Niagara Falls, and even Moscow’s Kremlin.
In MENA alone, there are active Earth Hour initiatives in the UAE, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine.
In addition to its symbolic hour of solidarity for the cause of energy conservation, Earth Hour has created a new crowdfunding platform called Earth Hour Blue. The platform allows everyday people to contribute to different projects around the world from planting 500,000 trees in Uganda (combating deforestation), pushing a law against oil pollution in Russian seas and an initiative to put a greater percentage of Argentina’s seas under protection.
WE SAID THIS: What would happen if Cairo participated in Earth Hour? Oh wait, we probably will – thanks to the chronic power outages!
