Aric Bickel, who works with the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration’s coral reef management program in the CNMI Division of Environmental Quality, told the Variety that all the lights at the park, including those at the monument and the gate leading to the park, were switched off for an hour.
Bickel said DEQ facilitated the event, giving discussions on why Earth Hour is important and how climate change has the potential to affect the CNMI.
“We also discussed what changes we can do in our own households to spread the principles of Earth Hour which is living greener and using less energy into our daily lives,” Bickel said.
After the discussion, the participants shared stories of how they are spreading the word about Earth Hour.
They also sang songs accompanied by a guitar throughout the 60 minutes of candle-lit darkness.
Bickel said Earth Hour as a garnered support from the mayor’s office, other local government divisions, and several local businesses which also switched off their unessential lights.
There were many community activities set for Saturday night.
Bickel said land marks such as the Las Vegas Strip, the Eiffel Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Pyramids in Giza switched off their lights in support of Earth Hour on Saturday.
Fast facts
126 countries and territories, over 4,000 cities, towns and municipalities and hundreds of millions of people across the globe took part in “delivering a powerful action of hope for a better, healthy planet.”
Online impressions included:
• 74.6 million of Earth Hour mentions on Google within 24 hours
• Number 1 worldwide trending topic on Twitter for most of the 24 hours, which never fell below position 7 (at its peak 2.2 percent of all tweets were Earth Hour related)
• Over 1,000 official Earth Hour photos were submitted from around the world.
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