SYDNEY, Australia - From Rome's Colosseum to the Sydney Opera House, floodlit icons of civilization went dark Saturday for Earth Hour, a worldwide campaign to highlight the threat of climate change.
The environmental group WWF urged governments, businesses and households to turn back to candle power for at least 60 minutes starting at 8 p.m. wherever they were.
The campaign began last year in Australia, and travelled this year from the South Pacific to Europe in cadence with the setting of the sun. Several Canadian and U.S. cities also planned symbolic blackouts or dimmings of monuments, including at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
"What's amazing is that it's transcending political boundaries and happening in places like China, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea,'' said Andy Ridley, executive director of Earth Hour. "It really seems to have resonated with anybody and everybody.''
Earth Hour officials hoped 100 million people would turn off their nonessential lights and electronic goods for the hour. Electricity plants produce greenhouse gases that fuel climate change.
In Sydney, where an estimated 2.2 million observed the blackout last year, officials said it appeared at least as popular this time, involving untold candlelight dinners and beach-bonfire parties. The city's two architectural icons, the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, faded to black.
Last year's shutdown produced an estimated cut of 10.2 per cent in Australia's carbon emissions for that hour.
Canadians in about 150 cities, towns and hamlets were expected to turn off their lights for 60 minutes.
Tara Wood of World Wildlife Canada says it's more than just going without power for an hour. She says the aim is to get people to make permanent changes to their everyday behaviour.
Lights went out at the famed Wat Arun Buddhist temple in Bangkok, Thailand; shopping and cultural centres in Manila, Philippines; several castles in Sweden and Denmark; the parliament building in Budapest, Hungary; a string of landmarks in Warsaw, Poland; and both London City Hall and Canterbury Cathedral in England.
Greece, an hour ahead of most of Europe, was the first on the continent to mark Earth Hour. On the isle of Aegina, near Athens, much of its population marched by candlelight to the port. Parts of Athens itself, including the floodlit city hall, also turned to black.
In Ireland, where environmentalists are part of the coalition government, lights-out orders went out for scores of government buildings, bridges and monuments in more than a dozen cities and towns.
Activists gathered outside one of Dublin's most impressive floodlit buildings, the riverfront Custom House, and cheered as the lights went out. The building houses the Environment Department, run by a Green party minister.
But next door, the international banks and brokerages of Dublin's financial district blazed away with light, illuminating floor after empty floor of desks and idling computers.
"The banks should have embraced this wholeheartedly and they didn't. But it's a start. Maybe next year,'' said Cathy Flanagan, an Earth Hour organizer in Dublin.
Ireland's more than 7,000 pubs elected not to take part -- in part because of the risk that Saturday night revellers could end up smashing glasses, falling down stairs, or setting themselves on fire with candles.
Likewise, much of Europe -- including France, Germany, Spain and European Union institutions -- planned nothing to mark Earth Hour.
Internet search engine Google lent its support to Earth Hour by blackening its normally white home page and challenging visitors: "We've turned the lights out. Now it's your turn.''
