Earth Hour is upon us UrbanMeisters and we want you to join this simple #ActToChange movement. A couple of days ago for International Woman’s day we read a charming post that said every day should be Women’s Day. While we could not agree more (Team UrbanMeisters is 60% women), we would like to modify this and say, every day should be Earth Day! We should respect our Earth everyday because after all, we are all living in this global “flat share”. But just like for International Women’s day, Father’s day or even your birthday, today – 19 March 2016 – is the one day when the spotlight is on our dear Mommy Earth during #EarthHour. Only that spotlight is not the right expression for this, rather NO LIGHT describes it better! But let us start at the beginning.
What is Earth Hour?
Think of Earth Hour as our planet’s birthday party in a sense, organised by the World Wildlife Fund (WFF)- bet all of you know this organisation and their emblematic panda! They created Earth Hour to unite people to take action for the planet. The first one was in 2007 in Australia with a lights out event- imagine it as Earth blowing off her birthday cake candles! Since 2007 the event has engaged green friends and organizations all around the world in more than 7.000 cities and 170 countries!
Why should you do it?
We’re pretty sure you UrbanMeisters are on board with this massive birthday party, but here are some more reasons to get you thinking about why you should join in.
Simple & easy to do– The cool thing about Earth Hour is that everybody can chose their own way to celebrate Earth.
Also this is the perfect occasion to show that since the COP21 we have understood that Green is the New Black and that we need to contribute with our little steps every day and every hour.
This year it’s extra special because this awesome campaign is celebrating it’s 10th anniversary.
Finally, we just came out of the hottest month ever! Do we need to say more? It is no time to smile happily and lean back. According to data released by NASA, February 2016 the planet was 1.35 degrees Celsius above the 1951 to 1980 average, or 2.43 degrees Fahrenheit above average. The sad thing is that we are just coming out of 2015, the hottest year ever, as Leonardo DiCaprio, powerfully stressed in his Oscar speech. The planet is warming because of manmade carbon pollution and other greenhouse gases emitted by us like burning fossil fuels. The planet has warmed about 0.8 degrees Celsius / 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880- you saw for yourself that February was proof of this acceleration of warming.
So after this shocker year and month, there could not be a better and easier moment to participate in your first climate change campaign.
So what is to be done?
Here is all the information you need to jump right in and get the Earth Hour party started.
When? Earth Hour 2016 will take place on Saturday 19 March, 8:30 p.m. local time. The event website with all information is www.earthhour.org.
1. How easy is it?
Knowing our stressed urbanites, we would not suggest anything that would pile on additional pressure in your every day life. You are already torn between work, family, friends and almost no me-time. But this is a really easy yet powerful way to participate and get going into the green revolution.
As a shout out for the planet, easiest is to “donate” your social (Facebook) feed to WWF. Starts with a simple profile picture change and includes enabling WWF to post relevant articles on your behalf on Facebook. Just follow the link www.earthhour.org/climateaction to action this simple step. And do share with your friends on FB and motivate them to do the same. Here is for example the profile pictures of some members of Team UrbanMeisters:
2. Want to do more?
The amazing thing is that there are almost endless activities orgnaised not only by WWF on a county level, but also by individuals.
You can check out here what is going on in each country organised by the country WWF here:
http://www.earthhour.org/earth-hour-around-world
- France was motivated by WWF and so Eiffel Tower will switch off it’s lights during Earth Hour! You can participate as well in a competition to shut down as many digital Eiffel Tower lights as possible before the event to show the suppert: http://earthhour.paris/Home/Welcome Try it! It’s fun!
- India will use this year’s Earth Hour to #GoSolar and promote rooftop solar energy systems to set as they say “greener sails for a greener future”. – See more at: http://earthhour.wwfindia.org/earth_hour_2016.php#sthash.8FxDwZos.dpuf
- Germany WWF dedicates the 10th anniversary of the event to to protect world’s biodiversity and endangered species. They tell the story of the ten iconic species that are endangered and show how their lives are already affected by climate change today and invite you to share this on your social feed to rise awareness. http://www.wwf.de/earthhour/
- Croatia (where our founder was born) has a great campaign too. A large gathering of common people & business groups is being organised at the Medvednica Nature Park in the morning of Earth Hour and help plant trees. This action is funded by IKEA and supervised by Croatian Forests. http://adria.panda.org/
Here you can check out what individuals, local business and organisations are organising in your city: http://www.earthhour.org/tracker
3. What about UrbanMeisters.com?
UrbanMeisters.com will but shutting down the lights for Earth Hour and we invite you to do the same! Do it, take a picture post it on Social Media using #UrbanMeisters to share with everyone how you celebrated Earth Hour. We will chose a lucky winner and donate 10€ in the winner’s name to support WWF.
4. What hashtags to use?
What ever you do tag #EarthHour #WWF and #UrbanMeisters
So get ready to turn the lights off and dear Mommy Earth, have a Happy Happy Birthday. We UrbanMeisters will rock it for you!
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