Night on Earth

This past Saturday, at 8:30pm local time, cities, landmarks, and buildings in 134 countries around the world — including many convention centers and hotels — turned off their lights to mark Earth Hour 2011.

The event was begun in 2007 in Sydney, Australia, where more than two million people and 2,000 businesses turned off their lights for an hour to bring attention to climate change, energy consumption, and sustainability.

As the pictures linked below will attest, Earth Hour this year was a startling and moving reminder of our relatively small place in the cosmos, and how special the wet, green ball where we all live is.

Here are before and after pictures of the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre during Earth Hour:

Courtesy Sophia Wong

Courtesy Sophia Wong

Some even more incredible before and after images — including of the Las Vegas Strip, as you've never seen it — are available from the Atlantic magazine's In Focus blog.  Definitely click here for more.