The time of the planet: in the world, millions of people will turn off the light against climate change today at 8:30 pm.

Between 8:30 pm and 9:30 pm, millions of people in over 180 countries and territories around the world will turn off the light for Earth Hour, a global initiative of WWF (World Organization for Nature), coordinated by the Argentina Wildlife Foundation country, to make an international call and demonstrate the importance of climate change. For this year 2019, the government of the province of Misiones has officially joined, as well as the Municipality of Montecarlo and the Iguazú National Park.

Earth Hour is the world's largest environmental awareness event, created to symbolically demonstrate that governments, businesses and individuals can work together to create a living planet. It all began on March 31, 2007 when Sydney, Australia, and the WWF decided to turn off the light for an hour, symbol of their concern and the fight against climate change.

The city has been completely closed – 2.2 million people have joined the cause – and since then, more than 7,000 cities from 160 countries on every continent, including Antarctica, have turned off their lights between 20:30 and 21:30. For more than 10 years, during the Earth Hour, about 1,300 monuments and landmark buildings have been obscured, such as the Sydney Opera House, the City Hall of London, the Empire State Building of New York, the Eiffel Tower of Paris and the Obelisk. in Buenos Aires.

Since 2009, and with sustained growth, Fundación Vida Silvestre Argentina coordinates and leads this campaign in our country with the aim of continuing to sensitize the population in order to reverse the serious consequences of this problem. At the national level, the Earth Hour 2019 initiative has been adopted by more than 30 municipalities across the country, with the provinces of Chaco, Chubut, Misiones, Santiago del Estero and Tierra del Fuego being linked at the national level. provincial, which will form part of the collective breakdown scheduled today March 30 from 20:30 to 21:30.

In Missions the Iguazú National Park it will extinguish the lights of the Intendance and the city of Buenos Aires will accompany the campaign for its part by extinguishing the monuments and buildings most emblematic of the city: the obelisk, the generic Floralis, the monument to the Spanish, the bridge of the woman, the cabildo, the faculty of engineering, the pedestrian Lavalle, the palace Lezama, the planetarium, the Plaza del Congreso, the monumental tower and the Usina del Arte. The city of Rosario will also be part of the symbolic electricity blackout, along with the lights of the National Flag Monument.

The government of Misiones province has said to be present in this edition of Earth Hour, affirming its commitment to work on the problem of climate change. It will turn off the lighting of the C buildingasa de Gobierno, the monument to Andrés Guacurarí, offices of the provincial public administration (executive power) of the city of Posadas and the theme park of the Santa Ana Cross. In turn, the Municipality of Montecarlo It will also darken the municipal building and Iguazú National Park, an iconic building of the Intendance, located in the city of the falls.

The central event of the 2019 edition in Argentina will be the realization of a single-use urban plastic night race that will take place on Saturday, March 30 in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, Costanera Sur .

Climate change is the most important environmental problem facing humanity. It is a climate change attributed, directly or indirectly, to human activity, which modifies the composition of the global atmosphere and increases the average temperature of the planet's surface above 2ºC. This has serious consequences, such as biodiversity loss, melting glaciers, extreme weather events, ocean acidification, habitat modification, and more. These impacts have an impact on communities, severely affecting millions of people, causing thousands of deaths and resulting in losses of $ 1 billion a year worldwide. Climate change is already a fact. Climate change has already happened, it can be seen and its impacts are extremely worrying and, in many cases, irreversible.

This year, under the slogan "Connect to Nature", Earth Hour invites everyone to become agents of change and to take action to protect our planet. Wildlife invites citizens, municipalities and businesses to join this initiative by turning off ornamental lights between 8:30 pm and 9:30 pm today, Saturday, March 30.

CP / PE