Earth Hour 2019

Earth Hour kicks off at 8.30 pm local time every year, on the last Saturday in March. The annual event was first introduced in Sydney on March 31, 2007.

All lights are turned off in cities around the world for an hour to honour World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)‘s effort in raising awareness about the impact of climate change and sustainability issues.

On this year’s Earth Hour (March 30), Penang hosted the event at Gurney Paragon Mall.

With the hashtag #Connect2earth as a tagline, the teamwork with WWF-Malaysia also managed to gather enthusiastic participants to support the call for greater protection of the Ulu Muda Forest Complex, which provides crucial clean water supply to 96 percent of Kedahans, 80 percent of Penangites and 40 percent of Perlisians.

Although the big annual event is said to be “the world’s largest grassroots movement for people to take action on climate change”, it seems like participation has been decreasing from year to year.

An example can be seen n British Columbia, as report says BC Hydro has stopped tracking the power consumption during the Earth Hour due to low participation.

However, survey shows that 7 out 10 British Columbians still believe that Earth Hour is a crucial event.

Big cities’ monuments and landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the UN headquarters in New York, the pyramids of Egypt, and Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio, also plunged into darkness to show supports for Earth Hour.

In spite of all the efforts, are we really doing enough for our planet?

Quoting WWF-Australia’s Dermot O’Gorman: “It’s about individuals taking personal action but joining with hundreds of millions of people around the world to show that not only do we need urgent action on climate change but we need to be protecting our planet.”