Earth Hour, happening this Saturday the 28th, is a global movement encouraging people to switch off their lights for an hour (from 8:30 to 9:30pm) in order to “Vote Earth”. Quoted from their site:

“For the first time in history, 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, or leaving them on is a vote for global warming. WWF are urging the world to VOTE EARTH and reach the target of 1 billion votes, which will be presented to world leaders at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009.” 

They've left no online channel unused - with their presence on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr and YouTube all listed on the site. Their following in each of the Social Media spaces is significant as well - with more than 517 000 people having joined their Facebook group. They also have a really cool Google Maps representation showing which cities have signed up.

For some off-site perspective you can check out this chart from the cool Wikirank tool we've been playing with in the office this morning:

One of my favourite sections on the Earth Hour site is – yes you guessed it – the blogger tool kit. It includes a bunch of widgets (of varying sizes, smart people) as well as badges and videos you can choose from. What would have been really cool is a list of other blogs who’ve used the widgets or posted about the event. I’d be interested to see who has and maybe connect with those that share similar outlooks to us here at GottaQuirk. Although there are obviously other means of finding that out.

Below a widget I grabbed from the site - you can just click on it to sign up. Get involved and save our frikken planet people. Also think of all the cool stuff you can get up to in an hour in the dark (let’s pretend I didn’t just write that).  

And my favourite of the adverts available online: