Dubbed “24 Hours of Reality,” at 7 p.m. in every time zone across the globe, one presenter in cities from New Delhi to New York to Cape Verde spoke to attendees and was beamed around the world live via the Web site of the Climate Reality Project, the group organizing the event.
Manning the helm in Jakarta was Charles Wiriawan, a West Java native who serves as program manager for a local environmental group.
Dozens of people filled the @america cultural center in Pacific Place mall, where Wiriawan described some of the effects the planet is already seeing and might expect in the future. He recounted record heat, droughts and flooding experienced across the globe in recent years.
The effort was the brainchild of Nobel laureate and former US Vice President Al Gore, who brought new prominence to the climate change issue with the Oscar-winning 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”
The event is part of a larger push by Gore’s Climate Reality Project to push back at “climate deniers” — those who question the legitimacy of the science that indicates man is contributing to global warming.
For Indonesia, a nation of some 17,000 islands stretched across 5,000 kilometers of the equator, the ramifications of climate change are significant — and potentially devastating. Wiriawan said he and more than 200 other Indonesian messengers personally trained by Gore hoped to raise public awareness of the issue.
As important, he said, is framing climate change though a local lens. For Jakarta, that means linking increasingly frequent flooding with a Jakarta constant — traffic congestion — to induce “big lifestyle changes” aimed at reducing individuals’ carbon footprints.
“We need to stop thinking that everybody has to own a car or motorcycle, and start to think of how to create a better mass transport system, bicycles even,” he said, pointing out the debilitating effect the February 2007 floods had on the city’s transportation and commerce.
The “24 Hours of Reality” event was broadcast in 13 languages, including Bahasa Indonesia. At press time, more than 3.3 million people had tuned into the livestream online.
Despite grim forecasts and much work to do, Wiriawan said he was hopeful.
“Human nature is kind, and our nature is also to preserve our nature,” he said. “We just need to make people realize that.”
Jakarta native and event attendee John Andri agreed that the issue was of particular relevance for the region. “It’s especially important for all of this part of Asia, because we are growing and we are low-lying,” he said.
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Source : http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/jakarta-gets-climate-reality-check/465746