Global peace and quiet

OneWorld UK

By Daniel Nelson

An NGO group in Bali is taking advantage of the international climate change conference on the Indonesian island to press for a Global Day of Silence.

Such a day, says the Bali Collaboration on Climate Change, would save an estimated 20,000 tonnes of carbon from the non-use of motorcycles, cars and aircaft.

I Gusti Raka Panji Tisna, a member of the Collaboration, says that the proposal is based on the Balinese practice of a 24-hour period of Nyepi (silence) to mark the new year, which falls in March or April.

Nyepi, he says, is a day not just of silence, but of inactivity.

Visitors to the island at the time of new year are sometimes shocked to find themselves effectively stuck in their hotels. Balinese Hindus are supposed to refrain from lighting fires, working, feeding the senses, travelling or leaving the home. Enthusiasts such as Panji Tisna who is quietly leafletting for the Silent Day in the conference centre even refrain from speaking.

In its most ideal and truest form, he says, Nyapi is to train the Balinese to be dead to the world but fully alive spiritually.

Impractical? No, says Tisna, because Bali, with almost 3.5 million people, already does it though he admits even here its under threat from modern life.

Pointless? No - "one day is better than none.

Think of the positive environmental impacts, he says, by even one day of non-activity by more than three million people who otherwise ride thousands of cars and motorbikes, operate modern machineries and gadgets.

On such day, the world would most certainly experience its lowest levels of CO2, noise pollution and waste generation.

A statement from the Collaboration called "for humanity to learn from Bali by determining March 21 as Nyepi Day, in which everyone can contribute t greenhouse gas emission reductions by stopping all activities and ebergy consumption for one day.

"This is a fair and easy way," the statement said. "Anyone can do it, because it requires only an individual will to do nothing for 24 hours.

"Bali can do it. Why can't the world?"

* I Gusti Raka Panji Tisna describes himself as a student and promoter of spiritual, ecological and aesthetical literacy