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At 8.30pm on Saturday 28 March, to show that they care about the threat of climate change.

'For the first time in history', says the WWF's website, 'people of all ages, nationalities, race and background have the opportunity to use their light switch as their vote - switching off your lights is a vote for Earth ... leaving them on is a vote for global warming.'

Earth Hour 2008 2009 from the WWF YouTube channel

WWF already has 2,000 cities from 80 countries on board, in addition to a host of iconic landmarks such as the and the Eiffel Tower.

Making the act of switching off symbolic of a 'vote' against climate change is an inspired idea - just so long as the collective peer pressure works. If not, the event could potentially become a stark symbol of the scale of public indifference. The Independent's Gemma O' Doherty thinks green fatigue has well and truly set in, and celebrates the demise of a previous (namely the ).

Incidentally, turning off the lights at home isn't, in itself, a particularly effective way to cut your emissions. Sure, light bulbs contribute to climate change, but they are small fry in the grand scheme of things. For example, Climate Change: Bloom knows that taking a return flight to Thailand removes 134 times more CO₂ from your personal carbon footprint than replacing a light bulb with a more efficient model.)

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