Sunday March 25, 2007

Australia's biggest city plans to shut off the lights in global warming gesture

SYDNEY, Australia (AP): Thousands of residents as well as hundreds of businesses and officials in Australia's largest city have pledged to switch off the lights and darken Sydney for an hour this week to show concern over global warming.

Organizers hope the event will be a dramatic start to a campaign encouraging Australians to conserve energy by turning off lights and other electrical equipment _ steps they say could cut Sydney's greenhouse gas emissions by 5 percent a year.

If all goes to plan, the iconic Sydney Opera House and harbor bridge, along with dozens of skyscrapers and thousands of homes across the city, will go dark at 7:30 p.m. (0830GMT) on Saturday, March 31. Essential lights like aircraft beacons will remain on.

"Earth Hour is an awareness program,'' wrote Philip McLean, the group executive editor of co-organizer Fairfax Media, in a special section of The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper that invited people to join in.

"It aims to educate the community about the simple measures that can be taken to curb greenhouse gas emissions,'' he wrote.

The City of Sydney council, New South Wales state government, and businesses big and small have signed on to the event, part-organized by the World Wildlife Fund. A week ahead of time, more than 30,000 people had registered on a Web site to take part.

Every weekday, thousands of workers pour out of Sydney's skyscrapers for home, leaving millions of lights and computer screens blazing in empty offices, generating millions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year, the WWF says.

If businesses turned off lights, computers, photocopiers and unused appliances, Sydney could cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 5 percent over the next 12 months _ the equivalent of pulling about 75,000 medium-sized cars off the road _ said WWF's communications director in Australia, Andy Ridley.

Earth Hour is the latest of several environmental initiatives being embraced by Australia, a major consumer of carbon-emitting coal and one of the world's largest per capita producers of greenhouse gas.

Global warming has strengthened into a mainstream political issue, with Prime Minister John Howard's government fighting with the Labor opposition for green credentials while maintaining that the resource-dependent economy must not be harmed by environmental policies.

The government last month announced a plan to phase out incandescent light bulbs and replace them with more energy-efficient fluorescent bulbs.

Fund manager AMP Capital Investors conducted an informal survey of Sydney commercial tenants recently, and found many want more energy-efficient buildings.

About 85 percent of tenants want office spaces that include features such as recycled water in the fire sprinkler systems and light sensors that detect when no one is in the office and switch lights off automatically, said Andrew Bird, AMP's head of property.

"It really is something that politically and socially is a wave that's building,'' Bird said of the new environmental awareness of businesses. "We want to be on it ... making sure that we're doing everything that we can because in the end our success will depend on it.''

Ridley said Earth Hour was about getting people to think more about how they could change their energy consumption in ways that could add up to big benefits.

"It isn't about moving into a cave and eating beans from a can. We can live a great life (and) make these small changes that will start us on a journey to cutting our emissions,'' he said.

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