Lights out as Earth Hour kicks off

Millions are expected to take part around the world in the annual event organised by conservation group WWF, with hundreds of well-known sights including the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Seattle Space Needle set to plunge into darkness.

"It's almost like the thing vanished," said Tony Jennings from Earth Hour after standing under the Sydney Harbour Bridge as the lights went off at 8:30pm (0930 GMT).

Hong Kong's signature high-rise skyline along the Victoria Harbour was a shadow of itself, with usually lit-up skycrapers standing dark -- among them were the city's tallest building, the 118-story International Commerce Centre.

In Taiwan the lights went off on the Taipei 101 tower, the world's tallest building before it was overtaken by Dubai's Burj Khalifa, while in Kuala Lumpur the usually dazzling Petronas Twin Towers were dark.

In neighbouring Singapore all Earth Hour events were cancelled because of the mourning mood following the death of the city-state's founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew.

In Australia, the initiative this year is focusing on farming, with fears that rising temperatures could ultimately damage the country's ability to produce food.

"In Australia agriculture is the most vulnerable industry to the impacts of climate change," said national Earth Hour manager for Australia, Anna Rose.

Rising temperatures, increased pests and weeds, changes in planting times, and more extreme weather events were already beginning to impact farmers, she said.

"People think about climate change as something that's only going to happen in the future," Rose told AFP.

"In this Earth Hour campaign we want to highlight the fact that rising temperatures and more extreme weather are affecting something we all have in common -- our food."

Earth Hour takes place from 8:30pm local time, and encourages citizens, communities, businesses and organisations to switch the lights off for an hour to highlight the plight of the planet.

This year it comes ahead of a crucial UN meeting in Paris in December which is bringing together the global community in an effort to limit global warming.

The initiative began in Sydney in 2007 but quickly went global.

"Over 170 countries and territories have already confirmed their participation; more than 1,200 landmarks and close to 40 UNESCO world heritage sites," Earth Hour head Sudhanshu Sarronwala told AFP ahead of the event.

These range from the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, the Acropolis in Athens, Edinburgh Castle, Big Ben, Ecuador's Quito historical centre to New York's Times Square.

This year will include a glow-in-the-dark Zumba party in the Philippines, a coordinated candlelit dinner in Finland billed as the world's largest, restaurant dinners by candlelight in London, and a power-generating dance floor to light up the Eiffel Tower after its hour-long sleep, said WWF.

Earth Hour's goal is not to achieve measurable electricity savings, but to raise awareness of the need for sustainable energy use, and this year also to demand action to halt planet-harming climate change.