famous landmarks including the Pyramids, the Eiffel Tower and Beijing's Forbidden City will go dark Saturday as millions turn out the lights for “Earth Hour”, a rolling grassroots movement aimed at fighting climate change. Now in its fourth year, the event looks set to be the biggest yet with thousands of cities and towns in 125 countries - 37 more than last year - pledging to take part in the aftermath of a failed climate summit last year. Like elsewhere around the globe, a number of organizations in Saudi Arabia will also take part in this global event. Despite December's fractious Copenhagen summit and recent controversy over climate science, public opinion still hopes for meaningful action to avert catastrophic global warming, according to Earth Hour founder Andy Ridley. Now run by the WWF, Earth Hour began in Sydney in 2007 when 2.2 million people switched off the lights in their homes, offices and businesses for 60 minutes to make a point about electricity consumption and carbon pollution. The campaign went global the following year, and this Saturday, more than 1,200 of the world's best-known sites will kill their lights at 8:30 P.M. local time in what organizers describe as a “24-hour wave of hope and action”. A raft of multinational companies including Google, Coca-Cola, Hilton, McDonalds, Canon, HSBC and IKEA have endorsed Earth Hour 2010 and pledged to darken their offices worldwide in support. Sydney's iconic Harbor Bridge and Opera House will help kick off the energy-saving marathon, with Egypt's Pyramids and Sphinx, the Trevi Fountain and Tower of Pisa in Italy and all major landmarks in Paris to take part, led by a five-minute blackout of the Eiffel Tower. In Dubai the world's tallest skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa tower, will dim its lights as will the high-priced office towers and five-star hotels strung along Hong Kong's famed harbor-front. But in Bangkok, city authorities said they were under military orders to halt their Earth Hour campaign for security reasons, as tens of thousands of anti-government protesters planned another major rally on Saturday.
