The big event starts at 8 p.m. EDT here, but it's come and gone in Sydney, Australia. Some Globe and Mail stuff:

Will the last one out turn out the lights?

60 things to do during Earth Hour

In training for the big event

Personally, I don't see Earth Hour hurting anything, but for it to be of real value, people should use the hour to think about how they can reduce their carbon energy consumption on an ongoing and permanent basis.

Along with historically high oil prices, the price of staples like rice, wheat and corn have doubled in the past year, causing unrest in places that already suffer stability issues.

From the NYT:

More fighting in Iraq. Somalia in chaos. People in this country can’t afford their mortgages and in some places now they can’t even afford rice.

None of this nor the rest of the grimness on the front page today will matter a bit, though, if two men pursuing a lawsuit in federal court in Hawaii turn out to be right. They think a giant particle accelerator that will begin smashing protons together outside Geneva this summer might produce a black hole or something else that will spell the end of the Earth — and maybe the universe.

Scientists say that is very unlikely — though they have done some checking just to make sure.