At 8:30 p.m. today, as every year, for 19, the lights of El Vaticano, the Sydney opera, the Empire State Empire, the Eiffel Tower, the Puerta de la India, the Christ the Redeemer or the pyramids of Egypt will go out for an hour. This blackout will be added citizens, institutions and companies of almost all of the 195 countries around the world.
The planet’s time is an initiative, launched by the World Nature Fund (WWF), which was born in Sidney in 2007, as a symbolic gesture to get attention to the problem of climate change. A simple gesture that consists of turning off buildings and monuments for an hour.
Eighteen years later it has become the greatest global movement for environmental conservation. According to the data provided by WWF Spain, 180 countries and territories participated in the last edition of the planet, in which hundreds of thousands of people added more than 1.4 million hours to the care of the planet with activities related to nature.
Effects of climate change
Science warns about the need to maintain the increase in global temperature below 1.5 ° C. However, earlier this year, Copernicus confirmed the unprecedented ascent of the planet’s temperature. In fact, the last ten years have ever registered and all indicators are out of rank. Internationally, last 2024 was the warmest year since there are records.
In the case of Europe and in the world in general, the negative effects are evident, The droughts They are increasingly prolonged, increasingly frequent and devastating floods are produced -as lived Last year in Valenciaand in the south of the peninsula-, or forest fires whose extinction is increasingly complex and complicated. All of them, climatic phenomena that degrade biodiversity and threaten the continuity of life on the planet.
Provide solutions
The scientific community warns of the risks, but also provides solutions, limit the effects of the climate crisis, among other measures, energy saving, of the gradual abandonment of fossil fuelsof the Restoration of the ecosystems, and the involvement of companies and institutions and the participation of citizenship in the construction of a neutral world in carbon, which contributes to a more sustainable way of living.
“With the planet time, we want to warn that we no longer have a minute to lose, that we must act quickly and determined to change our way of relating to the planet. We are still in time to stop the effects of this environmental crisis that threatens our natural corners,” says Juan Carlos del Olmo, general secretary of WWF Spain.