An Taisce fully supports the Earth Hour Campaign and congratulates Tony Lowes of Friends of the Irish Environment and John Gormley, Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and their staff for the work they have put into Earth Hour 2009.
Simply switch off your lights on Saturday March 28th from 8:30 to 9:30 pm.
An Taisce's latest magazine is very topical as it is dedicated to Energy see here...
For further information see http://www.friendsoftheirishenvironment.net/?id=26
The following is from Tony Lowes of Friends of the Irish Environment
At 8.30 pm on March 28 people around the world will turn their lights off for one hour in a universal effort to show that it is possible to take action on global warming.
Begun in Sydney two years ago by the World Wildlife Fund, 2 million people turned off their lights. Last year 50 million people across 35 countries switched off for one hour. Supported in Ireland by Friends of the Irish Environment, Dublin's Custom House went dark and Eirgrid reported reductions of 50 megawatts - enough electricity to power 32,500 homes.
This year Earth Hour is the biggest grassroots marketing campaign the world has seen. With no ad budget, it relies on people to carry the message - with newspaper groups and TV stations donating air time and space. It truly is an open-source model. Shepard Fairey, the artist who created the iconic ‘Change, Progress, Hope' imagery for Barack Obama in the recent US Presidential Election, has created the artwork for WWF's 2009 Earth Hour called ‘Vote Earth'.
Already, the term 'Earth Hour' is searched on the web every 7 seconds.
The target WAS 1,000 cities and 1 billion people. Limerick, Cork, Waterford, Galway, Belfast and Dublin will mean 6 Irish cities have helped swell the numbers participating to over 1500 cities.
John Gormley, Irish Minister for the Environment, is calling on all local authorities to support Earth Hour. The Office of Public work is going to darken Irish flood-lit national monuments - including the Rock of Cashel.