Earth Hour

Earth Hour is an international event organised by the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature/World Wildlife Fund), and held on the last Saturday of March each year, which asks households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights and electrical appliances for one hour to raise awareness towards the need to take action on climate change. Earth hour was conceived by WWF Australia and the Sydney Morning Herald in 2007, when 2.2 million residents of Sydney participated by turning off all non-essential lights.Following Sydney's lead, many other cities around the world adopted the event in 2008.
Earth Hour will next take place on Saturday, March 28, 2009 at 8:30 pm, local time.

Earth Hour 2009 is from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. local time, 2009-03-28. Currently, 82 countries and more than 2100 cities are 'committed to Earth Hour 2009', a huge increase from people participating in 35 countries for Earth Hour 2008.[4] 1 billion 'votes' is the stated aim for Earth Hour 2009[5], in the context of the pivotal 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference. There is however doubt over the validity of this "vote" given that no account is given to those who choose to leave their lights on to express a counter opinion. Further, as this is essentially a "publicity stunt" the possibility is that "1 billion votes" will be claimed by the PR agencies involved no matter the true outcome