Let’s kick the addiction

Sunday June 8, 2008
Let’s kick the addiction
The Jakarta Post


JAKARTA: From our air-conditioned homes, we enter our air-conditioned cars and drive to our freezing offices just so we can wear suits and blazers in the tropics. It’s just like the now widely-condemned habit of smoking: we know it is not a very politically correct practice – but what to do? We’re addicted.

When Indonesians began acquiring more wealth, they bought a TV, refrigerator, then a car and an air-conditioner and another TV; when they became even richer, along came the bathtub. By the time many were aiming for a two-car family, the green activists were criticising the wasteful ways of their own countries. But they were just party-poopers with only a handful of converts here.

Now, all the buzz is about climate change, brought about, we’re told, by the demands we’ve created to live the most comfortable lifestyles possible. Just as billions of Chinese and Indians are catching up on this purpose for living, others warn of food and energy crises.

To halt the plunge into further environmental damage, World Environment Day centres around the campaign “Kick the Carbon Habit”.

As those who quit smoking know, this gets extremely hard before it gets extremely rewarding.

To leave the car at home and start using the train would require immense willpower even though motorists know they would save a fortune on gas – not to mention reduce their carbon footprint.

With today’s higher temperatures, longer droughts and other weird whims of nature, the average person the world over is now being forced to a new awareness – that there might be some truth in the slogans which say kicking our wasteful habits is needed not only to save the planet, but also to save ourselves.

Soaring fuel prices, however, may be the only factor capable of waking Indonesians up from the cheap fuel dream, in which we thought the fuel subsidy was our birthright.

We can blame our leaders in part for leading us this way.

Former industry and trade minister Hartarto Sastrosoenarto described on Monday in Kompas how former president Soeharto suggested that plans to follow in the steps of South Africa’s self-sufficient energy needs be put on hold, given a seemingly bottomless supply of fuel in the early 1980s.

This perception also justified the preference for cars rather than trains, through cheap parking fees and the building of more roads than railways.

But that was then. Now green campaigns are all around us and yet few are taking notice of the need to make that personal sacrifice to end a wasteful mindset, spread it to family and neighbours and push the habit change drive to the corporate and political levels.

It would be much faster and easier if all levels were involved at once. It is high time the state ministry for the environment was changed into a portfolio ministry, after years of complaints by successive ministers they have little effect when it comes to the implementation of state policies.

Much like the frustrated state minister for women’s empowerment who is supposed to mainstream gender equality across all government sectors, the environment minister has few resources to “mainstream” the efficient use of fossil fuels.

Indonesia hosted the historic international climate change conference late last year in Bali. It was hoped the country would not only be a good host, but also be inspired to change its ways.

While that may be wishful thinking, the green campaign in developed countries may slowly help tame our voracious cutting down of forests.

But apart from China’s insatiable appetite, there is another addiction which makes the environment watchers wonder how and whether we can stop the disappearance of even more forests by 2010.

The name of this addiction is corruption, blamed for continued illegal logging. This, then – waste and graft – is our legacy to our children. Unless we can somehow kick the habit.