Earth Hour Covers Globe in Awareness

By Vanessa Gera, The Associated Press

BONN, Germany - From an Antarctic research base to the Great Pyramids of Egypt and beyond, the world switched off the lights Saturday for Earth Hour, dimming skyscrapers, city streets and some of the world's most recognizable monuments for 60 minutes to highlight the threat of climate change.

Time zone by time zone, nearly 4,000 cities and towns in 88 countries joined the event sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund to dim nonessential lights from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m.

An agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, is supposed to be reached in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December, and environmentalists' sense of urgency has spurred interest in this year's Earth Hour.

Last year, 400 cities participated; Sydney held a solo event in 2007.

In Bonn on Saturday, WWF activists held a candlelit cocktail party on the eve of a U.N. climate change meeting, the first in a series of talks leading up to Copenhagen.

"People want politicians to take action and solve the problem," said Kim Carstensen, director of the global climate initiative for WWF.

On Saturday, the White House announced that the Obama administration had organized a series of meetings among representatives of 16 countries and the European Union to discuss energy and climate issues.

The meetings, to be held in Washington in April and in La Maddalena, Italy, in June, will seek to resolve longstanding issues that have blocked the development of an international climate treaty.

The Chatham Islands, a small chain about 500 miles east of New Zealand, switched off its diesel generators to officially begin Earth Hour. Soon after, the lights of Auckland's Sky Tower, the tallest man-made structure in New Zealand, blinked off.

At Scott Base in Antarctica, New Zealand's 26-member winter team resorted to minimum safety lighting and switched off appliances and computers.

In Australia, people attended candlelit speed-dating events and gathered at outdoor concerts as the hour of darkness rolled through. Sydney's glittering harbor was bathed in shadows as lights dimmed on the steel arch of the city's iconic Harbour Bridge and the nearby Opera House.

To the West, floodlights at the Acropolis in Athens were switched off and an outdoor concert was staged on an adjacent hill, which many Athenians approached in a candlelight procession. The Athens International Airport switched off the lights on one of its two runways.

In Rome, the Colosseum and St. Peter's Basilica were plunged into darkness.

In Paris, the Eiffel Tower, Louvre and Notre Dame Cathedral were among 200 monuments and buildings that went dark. The Eiffel Tower, however, only extinguished its lights for five minutes for security reasons because visitors were on the tower.

China participated for the first time, cutting the lights at Beijing's Bird's Nest Stadium and Water Cube, the most prominent 2008 Olympic venues.

More than 200 buildings pledged to flip the switch in Chicago. In San Francisco, lights on landmarks like the Golden Gate Bridge were set to be turned off. The Las Vegas Strip planned to extinguish the marquees outside casinos, as well as the famous "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign.

This report contains information from The New York Times.

Originally published by BY VANESSA GERA.

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