Australia Leads Second Earth Hour Tonight

Sydney, Australia (AHN) - Australia will once again lead Earth Hour at 8 p.m. Saturday with its major cities and hundreds of others around the world joining the one-hour power shutdown event aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emission.

In Sydney, where the event was born last year, the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, dozens of city skyscrapers and hundreds of thousands of homes will turn off lights and appliances. Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Gold Coast, Ipswich, Melbourne, Newcastle and Perth cities will also turn off electricity.

In the U.S., Chicago's Sears Tower will turn off its lights. St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay is hosting a candlelit dinner at a restaurant. The San Francisco Bay Bridge will turn off its lights to signal Earth Hour across the California city, including buildings in the financial district and tourism landmarks.

Atlanta; Bradley Beach, New Jersey; Charlotte, North Carolina; Glendale and Phoenix in Arizona; Homer Glen, Illinois; and Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts are also joining the switchoff.

Fifty cities and towns in Canada will join the event, with Grammy award winner Nelly Furtado staging an unplugged concert in Toronto before an estimated crowd of 10,000.

Some of the other cities joining the 60-minute switchoff are Copenhagen, Dublin, London, Manila, Suva and Tel Aviv.

Last year, more than 2.2 million harbor city residents and 2,100 businesses in Sydney took part in the first Earth Hour organized by WWF Australia, Fairfax Media and the advertising company, Leo Burnett Worldwide, cutting the city's energy consumption by more than 10 percent.