Lights worldwide to go dark for Earth Hour

Calling it a visual vote for climate action, organizers of an “Earth Hour” initiative expect 2,800 cities, dozens of companies and hundreds of millions of individuals worldwide to turn off or dim their lights for an hour Saturday night.

Commitments have come in from 84 countries, according to the World Wildlife Fund, which organized the event because of its concerns about warming’s impact on humans and wildlife.

“With Earth Hour, millions of people from all walks of life will demonstrate their commitment to take action on climate change,” WWF CEO Carter Roberts said in a statement. “Turning off the lights is just the beginning. We’re asking everyone to also make commitments to reduce their energy use during the rest of the year and to ask their elected representatives to do the right thing because we need climate legislation now.”

Most electricity is produced by burning fossil fuels like coal and natural gas, a process that emits carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas tied to warming. While renewable energy sources like solar and wind have no direct carbon emissions, they have yet to displace fossil fuels due to costs and efficiencies.

McDonald’s will even soften the yellow glow from some Golden Arches as part of the time zone-by-time zone plan to dim nonessential lights between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. to highlight global climate change.

Key landmarks expected to go dark or dim include:

• New York City’s Broadway theater signs, Rockefeller Center and the Empire State Building
• The Las Vegas strip
• The Opera House in Sydney, Australia
• The Eiffel Tower and Elysee Palace in Paris
• The Acropolis in Athens, Greece
• The National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
• Niagara Falls
• The Great Pyramids and Sphinx in Egypt
• The London Eye Ferris wheel
• The Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

For the full story, go to MSNBC