World News for Students of English

02-04-2015 07:00

The lights went out in parts of Japan, Hong Kong and the Philippines today as part of Earth Hour – a climate change awareness campaign spanning cities around the world, encouraging people to switch off all non-essential lights between 8:30 and 9:30 p.m. local time on the last Saturday of March.

In Japan, the capital city’s iconic Tokyo Tower was plunged into darkness to mark WWF’s Earth Hour. Earth Hour began in Sydney in 2007, asking households and businesses to switch off their lights for 60 minutes to curb down global carbon pollution and promote climate change awareness. And it now spans more than 7,000 cities worldwide.

Elsewhere in Hong Kong, around 4,000 businesses, buildings and schools turned off their lights to mark Earth Hour. Hong Kong’s WWF chairman Edward Ho said that taking part in last year’s event showed that by simply dimming the lights for one hour, Hong Kong’s energy consumption was reduced by more than four per cent, avoiding the emission of 153 tons of carbon dioxide.

Difficult words: awareness (knowledge or understanding of something), spanning (including), encourage (to tell), essential (important), WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature), household (house), curb down (to reduce), dim (to make a light less bright), carbon dioxide (CO2).

Source: www.ondemandnews.com