Greatest Action in History

VLADIVOSTOK. 12 December. VOSTOK-MEDIA. The most popular campaign “Hour of the Earth-2009” will be officially launched in Poland, Poznan, on Friday. 74 cities of 62 countries have already pledged to turn off electricity for an hour at 20.30, local time, on March, 28. The first Russian participant is Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy.
Action which is planned to embrace more than one billion people and a thousand of biggest cities in the world will become the expressive symbol of calling upon everyone to take trenchant measures and save good climate decreasing greenhouse gaze emissions.
Launching campaign will start today in Poznan, Poland, where at the moment is held the meeting aimed at signing the UN Outline Convention on Climate Change. Delegations are expected to work out the convention and join it in 2009.
“When leaders gather for signing the new global climate convention they should feel the attention of all people in the world, - said James Leap, Director of WWF International, - Hour of the Earth lets the community speak out that the whole world is watching the meeting and waiting for real measures taken by politicians”.
Participant list includes such cities as: Capetown, Chicago, Moscow, Copenhagen, Dubai, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Las-Vegas, Lisbon, London, Los-Angeles, Manila, Mexico, Nashville, Oslo, Rome, San-Francisco, Singapore, Sydney, Toronto, Warsaw and etc.
The first Russian city is Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy. WWF Russia and Administration of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy headed by Vladislav Skvortsov signed an accord working out cooperation initiatives to participate in the action “Hour of the Earth”.
In Moscow WWF together with Leo Burnett Moscow, a creative agency, has started the preparation process. There is no agreement with officials but such companies as Mirax possessing Mirax-Plaza and Moscow-City with the tower “Federation”.
In other countries Earth Hour campaign will be supported with electricity shutdown in such buildings as : the highest hotel in the world “Bourge Dubai”, the highest towers on American continent – CN Tower in Toronto and in Southern Hemisphere – Sky Tower in Oakland. Besides, King of Sweden Charles Gustavo XVI in his castles and Giorgio Napolitano, President of Italy, in his residency in Rome (Quirinal Castle) will turn off the light in solidarity. Mesa Mountain in Capetown (SAR) and Opera Theatre in Sydney (Australia) will immerse into darkness for an hour.
“Global financial crisis showed that people can unite in grave times and take necessary measures. – said Aleksey Kokorin, head of WWF Russia, - The same decisive measures are necessary to tackle global climate problem. Participation in the action Hour of the Earth is such a strong call upon our political leaders to do best for safe future of the Earth”.
Preparation has started also in Vladivostok, Krasnoyarsk, Krasnodar, Murmansk, Archangelsk, Saint-Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Nizhniy Novgorod.
All information can be found on: www.earthhour.org/mediacentre, www.earthhour.org; www.earthhour.org/russia.
First action “Hour of the Earth” was held in Sydney (Australia) in March, 2007. In March, 2008 the action was very global: as many as 50 million people in more than 270 cities of 35 countries turned off the light for an hour. One exception was a small village Visoko (Fiji Islands) where people had never had any electricity, participated by switching on the light at recently set-up sun light station.