Mongolia turns off the lights for Earth Hour

An event was held in Sukhbaatar Square on March 23 to celebrate Earth Hour and demonstrate concern for the environment among the Mongolian people. The event took place between 7.30 pm and 9.30 pm, with the lights in Sukhbaatar Square going out for the hour between 8.30 pm and 9.30 pm.

The organizers of the event also appealed to households and businesses in Ulaanbaatar to turn off their non-essential lights between 8.30 pm and 9.30 pm that night.

Earth Hour was initiated in 2007 by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). It began when 2.2 million residents of Sydney, Australia, turned off their lights for one hour at 7.30 pm on 31 March 2007. Since then around 150 countries have joined Australia in marking Earth Hour, including Mongolia, which has marked the event since 2009. Earth Hour organizers in Mongolia say that public awareness of the link between electricity/energy use and environmental degradation has increased since the first Earth Hour event held in Ulaanbaatar four years ago.

This year Ulaanbaatar joined thousands of cities around the world in turning off the lights at key city landmarks. Paris switched off the lights of the Eiffel Tower and Moscow switched off the lights at the Kremlin, while hundreds of UNESCO World Heritage Sites around the world also went dark.

The organizers of the event say the growing popularity of Earth Hour has been in recognition of the fact that the use of fossil fuels for generating electricity is a major cause of climate change. This year’s Earth Hour campaign not only encouraged households and companies worldwide to switch off their power for one hour, but to also switch to renewable sources of electricity, such as wind and solar power.

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