Eight more cities have confirmed they will take part in next month's "Earth Hour", an initiative to conserve energy which started in Sydney last year. A total of 24 cities around the world will encourage homes and businesses to turn off the lights for one hour to raise awareness about global warming.

The initiative started Sydney last year when an estimated 2.2 million people flicked the switch, leaving the Sydney Opera House bathed in moonlight and the Harbour Bridge blacked out. Organiser Andy Ridley said Sydney's 60 minutes of darkness generated huge interest around the world and 23 other cities from the Asia Pacific, North America, Europe and the Middle East had now signed up to be part of the 2008 event.

The eight latest cities to join are Atlanta, San Francisco and Phoenix in the US, Thailand's capital Bangkok, Ottawa, Vancouver and Montreal in Canada and Dublin in Ireland. They join Australian cities Sydney, Perth, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, Adelaide as well as cities from Denmark, Fiji, New Zealand, Israel and the Philippines.

Mr Ridley said he expected the concept, which is managed by the conservation group WWF, to extend beyond the borders of these countries on the scheduled start time of 8:00pm local time on Saturday March 29. "I think it already has become much bigger," he said. "The idea was that anyone could do it, whether they were in a small village in France or a city like Sydney."

Mr Ridley said the Sydney event, in which residents were asked to switch off lights and appliances for one hour, had raised awareness about the problem of global warming while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by conserving energy. "I know that on the night we thought we might be able to cut energy use in the city by 5per cent but it ended up being 10.1 per cent," he said.

(AFP, ABC.net, 20/02/2008)