Candle-lit dinners or an early night off for Earth Hour

Prodita Sabarini ,  THE JAKARTA POST ,  JAKARTA   |  Sun, 03/29/2009 11:26 AM  |  Headlines

Light off: Dressed in punakawan costumes (traditional puppet dress), four men light up candles to form “Vote Earth” outside the GKBI building in Jakarta Saturday night. The activity was part of the Earth Hour global campaign. JP/J. Adiguna

For the first ever Earth Hour in Jakarta, some residents had candle-lit dinners or an early night off, on Saturday when homes and businesses voluntarily turned off their lights for an hour.
Gran Melia Hotel in Jl. Rasuna Said, South Jakarta, shut off the electricity in its food and beverages section for an hour and lit candles for visitors.

Hotel spokeswoman Dewi Banowati said Saturday that the hotel had planned a romantic atmosphere with candle light.

Running from 8.30 to 9.30 p.m., Earth Hour is part of a global campaign initiated by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to raise awareness of climate change.

Lisa Gunawan, an employee of Singapore-based Bank DBS Indonesia on Jl. MH Thamrin in Central Jakarta, said that her office had turned off the air-conditioning on Friday during lunch time, for one and a half hours.

The administration also switched off lights at some of the city’s iconic spots in Central Jakarta, including at the National Monument, the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle, City Hall, the Pemuda Statue and the Arjuna Wijaya fountain.

Bekasi resident Agus Kustiwa said Saturday that he would have an early night off.    
“Anyway, at that time, there’s nothing good on TV, just sinetron (soap operas),” he said.

Agus said that he learned about Earth Hour from internet mailings around a month ago.

“I looked at the website and it seemed like a good idea, what with climate change and the energy crisis,” he said.

Agus said that he had no problem in convincing his family to turn the electricity off for an hour, and have convinced some neighbors to participate too.

He said the promotion of the campaign, mainly through the internet, was not enough.
Up to Saturday evening, more than 35,000 people joined the campaign by becoming members of the WWF-Indonesia Facebook website for Earth Hour.

The Earth Hour initiative began in 2007 in Sydney, Australia. More than 2.2 million people switched off their lights for an hour during the Sydney campaign. In 2008, the number grew to some 50 million supporters from 370 cities in 35 countries.

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