SYDNEY, (Reuters) – Landmarks such as Sydney’s  Opera House, Beijing’s Forbidden City and Taiwan’s Taipei 101  office tower temporarily went dark yesterday as nations  dimmed the lights for Earth Hour 2010 to call for action on  climate change.

The symbolic one-hour switch-off, first held in Sydney in  2007, has become an annual global event and organisers World  Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said they expect this year’s to be  the biggest so far.

The remote Chatham Islands was the first of more than 100  nations and territories to turn off the power at 8.30 p.m.  local time, in a rolling event around the globe that ends just  across the International Dateline in Samoa 24 hours later.

Tiny Tuvalu, which fears being wiped off the map from  rising sea levels, tried to go carbon-neutral for the event,  pledging to cut power to its nine low-lying Pacific atolls and  asking car and motorcycle owners to stay off the roads, WWF  said.

Far to the south in Antarctica, Australia’s Davis research  station pledged to dim the lights.

Event co-founder Andy Ridley told Reuters that 126  countries and territories had so far signed up, with thousands  of special events scheduled, including a lights-out party on  Sydney’s northern beaches and an Earth Hour ‘speed dating’  contest.
The number of participants is significantly up on 2009,  when 88 countries and territories and more than 4,000 towns and  cities took part. Organisers have estimated between 500 million  and 700 million people were involved last year.