“On Saturday, March 27, 2010 at 8:30 p.m. local time, Earth Hour will once again cascade around the globe, from New Zealand to Hawaii,” explains the U.S. Earth Hour website. “Hundreds of millions of people around the world will come together to call for action on climate change by doing something quite simple—turning off their lights for one hour.”

[Post-event update below.]

The international Earth Hour website provides some historical perspective: “Earth Hour started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia when 2.2 million homes and businesses turned their lights off for one hour to make their stand against climate change. Only a year later and Earth Hour had become a global sustainability movement with more than 50 million people across 35 countries participating. Global landmarks such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge, The CN Tower in Toronto, The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and Rome’s Colosseum, all stood in darkness, as symbols of hope for a cause that grows more urgent by the hour. In March 2009, hundreds of millions of people took part in the third Earth Hour. Over 4000 cities in 88 countries officially switched off to pledge their support for the planet, making Earth Hour 2009 the world’s largest global climate change initiative.”

Organized by the World Wildlife Fund, Earth Hour is an event designed to call attention to what is perhaps the most serious threat to life on our planet, climate change. Click here for evidence of climate change and other crises unfolding simultaneously, which together portend the end of the world as we know it.

UPDATE: The fourth worldwide Earth Hour event is history. Rolling around the planet in successive time zones, lights went out at 8:30 p.m. local time in over 100 participating countries. Well, some lights went out, while most others stayed on. Brazil claims lights were switched off in 98 cities, but it was landmarks, such as the Statue of Christ the Redeemer overlooking Rio De Janeiro, whose disappearance into the dark was most notable. Lights on the CN Tower in Toronto were turned off, but elsewhere “Hockey Night in Canada” continued without interruption and with illumination. The glittering Las Vegas Strip was partly dimmed, but gambling continued in well-lighted casino interiors. I can’t help but think that events such as Earth Hour, however well meaning they may be, don’t accomplish much more toward preventing climate change than human sacrifices did in preventing droughts in the Inca empire.

Is it any wonder that James Lovelock was recently quoted, “I don’t think we’re yet evolved to the point where we’re clever enough to handle as complex a situation as climate change. The inertia of humans is so huge that you can’t really do anything meaningful.” Lovelock is best known for his “Gaia Theory,” i.e., that the Earth is one great living system. He believes that humans are inflicting great harm on that system through “global heating” but expects Gaia to eventually right herself. He has hope that a “few breeding pairs” of our species will survive the process, by forsaking sweltering lower latitudes for cooler climes near the poles.