Earth Hour!

What is Earth Hour? At precisely 8:30pm Jakarta time on Saturday March 26th, thousands of people around Indonesia were participating in the worldwide event, known as Earth Hour. Earth Hour is a time of awareness on how to conserve energy and a small step towards saving our planet. Although many people participate in Earth Hour, it is only the beginning of the long journey that lies ahead. Now the earth is facing serious problems such as: Global Warming, Pollution, Deforestation and many more issues that threaten to destroy our planet.

Earth Hour is very logical and intelligent. Many of people seem to know about Earth Hour, and how it’s started to help our community. It has resulted in a noticeable drop in power consumption. Half an hour after the event had started, the black out campaign saved approximately 600 megawatt, recorded by the state-owned electricity company, PLN. (Last year, they saved up to 120 megawatt for 30 minutes). The amount of energy saved this year happened due to the contribution from the Jakarta government, who has hosted Earth Hour 3 times in a row, and hopefully more to come. Many buildings of Central Jakarta joined the global Earth Hour, switching their lights off.

During Earth Hour: Although, 5 times more energy was saved this year, only 30% of the people I surveyed participated in the global campaign. Another 30% of the people in my community, seemed to know or have heard about Earth Hour, but didn’t seem to realize that the date was set on the last Saturday of March. Many people said, “We heard about it, but no one really seemed to bring the matter up, so we didn’t know when or how long it would be.”

Here’s a girl and her family who had the most exciting time, celebrating this black-out campaign: Jade, 13, from Jakarta International School decided to just have a nice and quiet memorable Earth Hour, with her family. “We just turned off all the lights at first, but then went a bit extreme and decided to cut all of the electricity! During the first hour we just chilled, and had some snacks; but as soon as 9:30pm came around, we challenged ourselves with another half -hour! We played a game of monopoly in the dark, lit by only a few candle lights.” Jade says with a smile on her face. “We just laughed and thought how cool it would be to see the city before and during earth hour. We thought it was fun and that we should have them more often!”


What the government has done: Up until today, many campaigns and outdoor activities have been created for environmental awareness. The government has been a huge help (but we still need more) so the only thing standing in the way of us making planet earth a better place; is us. The city of Jakarta is not the best looking city in the world. There are shanty houses, ruined sidewalks, pollution, barely any green and, too many vehicles.

According to the Indonesian Ministry of Transportation, Indonesia has about 50.1 million registered cars scattered throughout the major islands. The number of registered vehicles in Jakarta is nearing 9.5 million, including about 2 million cars and 6.6 million motorcycles. Each day, around 1,000 new motorcycles and 300 hundred new cars are registered in Jakarta alone.

The Jakarta government have taken a few steps by doing green campaign activities for example: there is a car free day in Jalan Thamrin, and Jalan Sudirman every last Sunday of the month. There seems to be some people that are interested to try and promote bike to work movement. But is that enough?


On that note, we must agree. As much as the energy we saved this year, we have to remember, it won’t heal the world. So remember, every small thing we start to do, it’ll make a difference.


By: Chesney Collyer
Editing : Made Wisnu Wijaya