Of Saving Energy and International Cooperation

“It is unrealistic to expect individual nations to make, independently, the sacrifices necessary to conserve energy. International leadership and worldwide cooperation are essential if we expect to protect the world’s energy resources for future generations.”

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.

I agree with the statement above. If we expect to protect the world’s energy resources for future generations, it is definitely not possible without international leadership and worldwide cooperation. The reasons are not too difficult to fathom.

The current world order can be seen as consisting of a few blocs: Western Bloc (Basically all developed and first world countries like USA, European Union, Japan, Australia, Canada etc.), BRIC countries(upcoming economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China growing at a stupendous rate) , Islamic Union (basically oil rich developing countries with Islam as their state religion like UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar), other second and third world developing countries and the countries in total chaos (countries with lowest human development index like North Korea, Sudan, Ethiopia, Iraq and Afghanistan). Each bloc has different needs and very few, if any, are prepared to think of long term solutions.

Developed countries are the biggest consumers of energy resources. Even while they preach to developing countries to cut down their fuel consumption, they do not seem to be implementing the same for themselves. The only exception to this rule is the European Union (EU) that has invested more money than anybody in finding energy conservation solutions. USA on the other hand refuses to cut its fuel consumption, cut down its green house emissions or cut down its fuel subsidies that keeps fuel prices artificially low and consumption high. This gives an easy excuse to developing countries like India and China to not do any thing about their ever-increasing energy thirst. For the poor countries it does not even make sense to talk about expensive energy saving initiatives as they barely have money to even feed their people, what to talk about energy sensitivities!

The basic problem is that nobody wants to put a brake on the current energy-dependent development in their respective countries. Political concerns and obsession with its super-power status prevents US from doing anything about it. China sees the moral preaching to cut down energy consumption as a Western attempt to curb its growing power. Taking cue from these two giants most of the other countries refuse to do anything in name of "national interests".

All in all a loose-loose situation for the future generations wrt energy security. Without international leadership and worldwide cooperation the future for them indeed looks bleak.