Hemat Energi, Hemat Biaya'Er Indoors informs me that the above slogan is not seen or heard any longer on Indonesia's TV's. It translates as Save Energy, Save Money which seems to be eminently sensible.
We can define intelligence as the ability to adapt to one's environment, so on that basis knowing that fossil fuels are running out, the notion of using less, rather than more oil, surely indicates a higher level of intelligence.
Here in Indonesia, however, Pertamina, the state oil company, has reduced the price of high octane fuel "
because the supply for oil was high while the demand was low,"
said company spokesman Toharso.
"We took into consideration that overall the crude oil price has gone down. Not only that, but the rupiah has grown stronger," he said. "Pertamina hopes it can foster economic growth."This will, of course, affect only the owners of luxury cars who should surely be charged more rather than less for the 'pleasure' of driving a gas guzzler. Still, if they can contribute to economic growth ...
"
The price fuel cut for Pertamax has a connection with how the high and middle classes in Jakarta spend their money, especially for entertainment. With this change, some people will have money to spare,"
said Yoris Sebastian, head of the food and beverage division for Hard Rock Café, Jakarta."
The challenge is how to make those people spend their money in the city to foster the local economy and not abroad, such as spending money by shopping in Singapore,"
he said. That's some kind of convoluted logic, even assuming that owners of luxury cars are habitués of Hard Rock.
I reserve judgement on biofuels made from plants as I feel, intuitively, that the production of these could be energy intensive as well as needing vast areas of agricultural land which could be better used for food crops. What I do know is that we need to get back to basics and reduce our energy needs.
Indonesia Anonymus have one obvious answer - switch off. PLN, the State Electricity company has resorted to adverts on the sides of city buses exhorting us to cut down on our use of electricity. Perhaps the easiest thing to do is to switch off appliances when they're not in use.
List your household appliances and then consider those that are never switched off because they're either essential, like a refridgerator, or have a standby mode. Now consider how much use your DVD player, computer, TV, stereo etc. have, yet still display that little red light. As much as 10% of Indonesia's electricity is estimated to be used for standby purposes.
And if we all used those energy saver light bulbs which offer a brighter light for a lower wattage, then even greater energy savings could be made.
I've recently discovered that
electric motorbikes are now viable for urban commuters. They don't use petrol and they are, therefore, non-polluting. They don't give any information as to the amount of electricity need to recharge the batteries they run on. The main problem I see, apart from the fact that they would cost twice as much as those noisy little Chinese machines that crowd our streets, is just that. They would also crowd our streets.
Far better that we had adequate (and even more than adequate) public transport to cut down on those traffic jams which use up vast amounts of scarce fuel.
Here endeth today's missive, powered by an ecologically sound energy source: hot air.
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