The world might be getting a lot darker this Saturday night. That’s because environmental groups are asking everyone to mark ‘Earth Hour’ by turning off their lights between 8:30 and 9:30 p.m.

Officials in 37 world capitals have already agreed to take part and landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, Empire State Building and Gaza Pyramids will all go dark for the hour. But organizers are asking the public to join in as well, with a goal of getting one billion people to commit to switching off their lights.

The World Wide Fund for Nature says the aim is to highlight the effects excessive power use has on the climate. It says participants do not need to turn off all electrical equipment, simply non-essential lighting.

You’d think the event was a power company’s worst nightmare, but Con Edison has welcomed the plan and is encouraging customers to take part. If the event really does take off, it will be interesting to see how power companies cope with the massive spike in demand of customers switching lights back on at the end of the hour.

There have been some notes that astronauts on board the Discovery shuttle would get an amazing view of the entire world going dark if Earth Hour caught on in a big way. However, that’s not the case as the idea is for each area to power down at 8:30 p.m. in its respective local time. (Speaking as a Brit, that saves some major potential for confusion given our clocks will be going forward for daylight savings at the point New York will be half-way through the blackout.)

In a similar event last year, an estimated 50 million people switched off their lights, of which 36 million came from the United States. The start time has been switched from last year’s 9pm so that more places in the world will be dark enough for the event to have a visual impact.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 at 2:26 pm under Green Technology, Science and technology.

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