KATHMANDU: In 2007 a special step was taken in Sydney against global warming, called Earth Hour. Around 2.2 million homes and businesses in Sydney switched off their light bulbs for one hour to initiate a global sustainability movement.

In 2008 around 50 million people followed this tradition and even world famous landmarks like Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Rome’s Colosseum, the Sydney Opera House and the Coca Cola billboard in Times Square embraced darkness in order to show solidarity against global warming.

The Earth Hour is being taken to the next level this year with the goal of one billion people switching off their lights. So people from all ages and nationalities have to decide whether they want to vote for earth - by switching off their lights — or vote for global warming — by leaving lights on. World Wide fund is urging everyone to ‘Vote Earth’ and this will be presented to the World leaders at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009.

This year Earth Hour is being observed on March 28 from 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm and Gorkha Brewery (a part of Carlsberg group) issued a statement has pledging to ‘Vote Earth’.

The company has also mentioned that all the non-essential lights of the company will be turned off at that time and even the company’s website will go black.