TUCSON, Ariz. — Kamaila Sanders sat in near darkness Saturday evening while working the service desk at Manzanita-Mohave Residence Hall on the University of Arizona campus between 8 and 9 p.m. in observance of Earth Hour 2008.

“There’s something nice about the lights being out,” Sanders said. “I actually have to talk to people who live here because I can’t occupy myself with the computer.”

Residence halls at the UA were but a few of the thousands of the organizations, businesses and homes that participated in a worldwide event where people turned off their lights and cut the power to appliances to promote lower electricity consumption and reduce carbon emissions.

“I think it’s a good cause because it kind of makes people aware of how much energy they really use, and not all of it is always necessary,” Sanders said.

The World Wildlife Fund backed Earth Hour, and it received the support of 20,000 businesses and 260,000 individuals according to figures from the official Web site, earthhour.org

Cities worldwide observed their energy conservation period between 8 and 9 p.m. on March 29, starting in Sydney, Austrailia.

On a slightly smaller scale, Manzanita-Mohave acquired the signatures of nearly 50 residents who agreed to recognize the event.

Hall Director Jess Crombie and resident assistant Kaleb Badger took a copy of the signature list and visited the individual rooms of each person on the list to remind them to turn off the lights and cut out the electricity.

“I watched a YouTube video on this earlier today and I almost forgot about this myself,” Badger said. “It’s something our hall has been promoting for awhile now.”

Most prominently, Google search engine participated in Earth Hour by turning its homepage background black and posting an explanation of the event and a summary of its goals.

“We believe in doing our part to help combat climate change, and found the Earth Hour initiative to be a timely, important event,” the search engine said. “Further, we think the 'lights out' idea's individual-centered nature is something that millions of people worldwide can participate in. In short, we really like it. So we did something about it.”

Despite its reach, Earth Hour did not go off without its fair share of criticism from some who claim that turning off lights and unplugging appliances does little to reduce energy consumption.

“I think this whole event is really a farce,” said Alex Aronov, a freshman majoring in economics. “Power plants are still manufacturing power even as we’re not necessarily using it. We’re just kind of saving it until we turn everything back on, which actually requires more power than to just leave everything on.”