Earth Hour is a worldwide event organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and held on the last Saturday of March annually, encouraging households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights for one hour to raise awareness about the need to take action on climate change. The event, conceived by WWF and Leo Burnett, first took place in 2007, when 2.2 million residents of Sydney participated by turning off all non-essential lights. Following Sydney's lead, many other cities around the world adopted the event in 2008. Earth Hour 2012 took place on 31 March 2012 from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., at participants' local time.

In 2004, confronted with scientific findings, WWF Australia met with advertising agency Leo Burnett Sydney to "discuss ideas for engaging Australians on the issue of climate change". The idea of a large scale switch off was coined and developed in 2006, originally under the working title "The Big Flick". WWF Australia presented their concept to Fairfax Media who, along with Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore, agreed to back the event. The 2007 Earth Hour was held on 31 March in Sydney, Australia at 7:30 pm, local time.

Dash Berlin (born 8 November 1979) is a Dutch progressive-trance project created in 2007 in The Hague by Jeffrey Sutorius, Eelke Kalberg and Sebastiaan Molijn. The front man of the group is the DJ Jeffrey Sutorius a.k.a Dash Berlin . Kalberg and Molijn have been contributing to the international dance scene for over ten years, with award-winning and platinum-selling hits for dance acts such as Alice Deejay, Vengaboys, Candee Jay, Pronti & Kalmani and Solid Sessions . They also have been working together with DJ Sander Kleinenberg on classic tracks like “This Is Miami” and “The Fruit” and remixes for major artists such as Justin Timberlake ('Rock Your Body' Remix winning the award for 'Best Remix' at the Dance Star USA Awards), Janet Jackson, BT, Usher, N.E.R.D., Lenny Kravitz, Junkie XL, Röyksopp, Mylo, and Annie Lennox .

Dash Berlin was formed when Jeffrey Sutorius (born in November 1979 in The Hague, The Netherlands) and his close friends, Kalberg and Molijn teamed up in 2006. . Jeffrey Sutorius was a fan of electronic music from his high school days and in his late teens worked in a record store and became a collector of vinyl trance music. Inspired by pioneering figures such as Sven Vath, Oliver Lieb and Sander Kleinenberg, Sutorius began mixing and producing his own music. He started performing in the Dutch underground music scene in early '95 and teamed up with fellow producers and close friends Kalberg and Molijn to form Dash Berlin in 2006 .