If Bali can do it. Why can’t the world?

One way to reduce greenhouse gases…is to do nothing one whole day!

This was put forward to the International Climate Change Conference currently held in Bali by the Balinese Community on Climate Change, founder of the blog and website www.worldsilentday.org, see also “Vote for World Silence Day”.

The proposed day of silence is based on the Balinese practice of a 24-hour period of Nyepi (silence) to mark the new year. On Nyepi day, based on the Balinese philosophy Tri Hita Karana, Balinese do for 24 hours

• not light a fire (all food is cooked on the previous day, no light is turned on after dark),
• not work (physically, but encouraged to meditate, all commercial activities are stopped),
• not travel (people stay at home that day, all roads are empty, airports and seaports are closed), and
• not get entertained (all entertainment equipements such as radio, television, computer etc is switched off, all social activities are stopped).

The Bali Community on Climate Change estimates that greenhouse gases are reduced by a minimum of 20 thousand tons at Nyepi by observing one day of silence and inactivity:

According to the 2005 data there were about 1,008,000 motor cycles and 200,000 cars in Bali. If it is assumed that each motor cycle consumes 4 liters of petrol each day, about 4,032,000 liters are used. Again assuming each liter of petrol produces 2.4 kg CO2, the CO2 emission from motor cycle would be 9,676,800 kg. Assuming one car consumes 10 liters of petrol, about 2 million liters of petrol are used each day. This would emit 4.8 million kg of CO2.About 80 airplanes operate at the Ngurah Rai airport in Bali, consuming about 1600 kiloliter of fuel (avtur). Using the same conversion assumption, the emission would amount to 3.840 ton CO2. Thus total emission from motor cycles, cars and airplanes would be about 17,316 tons. This is a conservative estimate. At a minimum, Bali reduces 20 thousand tons of CO2 emission during Nyepi, not including emission reduction from the seaports, industry and energy sectors.

A statement from the Collaboration called “for humanity to learn from Bali by determining March 21 as Nyepi Day, in which everyone can contribute to greenhouse gas emission reductions by stopping all activities and energy consumption for one day. “This is a fair and easy way,” the statement says. “Anyone can do it, because it requires an individual only to do nothing for 24 hours.

In the German speaking part of Europe car-free Sundays are a recurring issue in the political arena since the 80s. While in the early days it was pushed for a total ban of cars on all roads on a particular Sunday (which were almost impossible to realise), recent efforts to create car-free parts of roads are very successful. In Switzerland these actions are called ‘Slow-ups‘. A particular stretch of a road, usually between 25-50km, is closed for motor vehicle traffic and opened only to ’slow’ traffic, such as pedestrians, bike riders and skaters.