As I said before in this post, I want to post my article on 18 April 2011. And here they are! Well, if you have any corrections -maybe the grammars, vocabs, or anything- please leave one or two comments. I really appreciate it if you do. Hope you enjoy it!
It was 26 March 2011 evening. All lights turned off, making the entire city went dark. What happened? Was there a power failure? No, it turns out that the Earth Hour event was ongoing then.
Earth Hour is an event organized by WWF. It is a simple event, just by turning off the lights and electricity for 60 minutes. Started in Sydney in 2007, this year the number of participants has reached more than a billion people in more than a hundred countries around the world.
This event is held every year in the last Saturday of March, from 8.30 – 9.30 PM. WWF’s goal in organizing this event is none other than to reduce pollutions and the use of natural resources that cannot be renewed, which can damage the environment. For example, if just 10 percents of Jakarta residents turn off two lights for 60 minutes, it could save about 300 Megawatts of electricity. This amount is equivalent to the electricity to power 900 villages or reduce approximately 267 tons of CO2 emissions.
Also in Jakarta, many people decided to participate in Earth Hour event this year, including lots of high school and college students along with their families. We were trying to find out what they knew and what they do in Earth Hour, and their answers were rather interesting.
Almost all of them knew what Earth Hour is, and when it was held. But some of them did not participate. Either because they forgot, or they chose to do their usual activities.
There were also some of them who were participating, but not completely turn off the electricity, like just turned on a lamp in their house. Ariyani, 16, from SMA Santa Ursula, is one of the participants that did not completely turned off the lights.
She said, "My family and I usually do our activity separately, like one is watching TV, while the other turns on the AC in his room, and so forth. During Earth Hour, we all gather in one room, and turn off all electrical equipment in another room.We only turn on one lamp then."
Most of our sample who has participated in Earth Hour this year said that they just turned off all electricity and lamps, and had a quality time with their whole family or simply did nothing in their room. Some of them used this opportunity to walk around their neighborhood and enjoyed the night sky.
“Every day I always busy with my own job, like homework and stuff like that. With this event, I could spend an hour outside my house, enjoying my neighborhood, and know a lot of nice neighbors who I never knew before.”
About 95 percent of them agreed that we should continue this event next year. There are various reasons; like that they want to fight global warming, to conserve more energy, and to reduce pollutant.
"I strongly agree this event is held again, because basically this event aims to remind us to economize in energy usage, so that we do not carelessly use electricity when it is not really necessary, just because we feel we can afford more,” said Ariyani.
Levina, 15, said “Agree, because this is important to save our earth, although only one hour but if many people are participating, this event will certainly useful."
“I hope next year there are more and more people who actively participate in Earth Hour, so the Earth can continue to survive much longer for the future of us all,” said Levina.
Novi, 15, from SMAK 3 Penabur Jakarta, said “I hope they will increase the socialization of this event to public next year, so that people know more about Earth Hour and is more interested in participating in this event, because I felt that the socialization of Earth Hour is still lacking, considering the importance of the essence of Earth Hour in our daily lives."
Yesi, 15, from SMAN 31 Jakarta, said “I hope, we all can participate for next year, and we will get back our nice earth.”
The participants also had some hopes for next year’s Earth Hour. They hoped that more and more people know about this project and are willing to participate. Some of them added, “I hope the number of people who really care about the Earth increase day by day, and then we do something useful such as planting trees during Earth Hour together, not just turning off the lights.”
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