Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez told the citizens of that country last week that they should shower for just three minutes in order to conserve on water usage in the face of low water reserves as a result of the current El Nino weather phenomenon. In a televised Cabinet meeting broadcast throughout the country, Chavez told his ministers, “Some people sing in the shower, in the shower half an hour. No kids, three minutes is more than enough. I’ve counted, three minutes, and I don’t stink.“
The ministers laughed when he also slammed the use of Jacuzzis mockingly calling the jet bath system a new form of “communism” as he pretended to not know what it was. But it may have been nervous laughter as Chavez’s ministers are fully aware that he considers himself to be in a position to enforce a no-Jacuzzi, three-minute bath order throughout Venezuela. As one foreign blogger humorously put it, Chavez would “set up a revolutionary shower police and reward people who catch their neighbours taking more than three minute showers and snitch their names to revolutionary tribunals”. Truth spoken as humour? Ask the former owners of television stations and commercial entities that now belong to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
Chavez has also indicated that energy-saving measures will be put in place and said the government would soon publish a decree prohibiting imports of low-efficiency electrical appliances. He also called on ministries and state-run companies to cut energy consumption by 20 per cent immediately. This is because Venezuela, a huge oil-producing state, which also has vast reserves of coal and gas as well as advanced energy technology – hydroelectricity – has been suffering blackouts over the past year. According to reports, this is because of rapidly growing demand and under-investment, and has been aggravated by a drop in water levels in hydroelectric dams.
Venezuela’s blackouts are nowhere near the scale of what is experienced here, and with immediate attention being paid to the root cause, they most likely will never deteriorate to what Guyanese have suffered for the past 30-odd years. Strong-arm tactics aside, Chavez’s pro-activeness is commendable. Obviously, Guyana cannot be compared to Venezuela in terms of resources. However, since it appears that their watchword is ‘don’t fix it even when it’s broke’, our leaders could clearly use a tipple of whatever it is he is drinking as long as it doesn’t go to their heads.
President Jagdeo seems to have placed all of our eggs in the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) basket, but where is the concomitant attention to other areas of contributing to the curbing of global warming that would prove that this country is serious about what it is saying? There was a huge hullabaloo about two years ago to have the population change all their incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescent bulbs which were donated by Cuba. By now all of these bulbs must have outlived their shelf life and a great many would have been replaced by incandescent bulbs which are still being imported and are cheaper.
The Guyana Power and Light (GPL) Inc has been touting the ‘switch-off and unplug’ strategy. However, because of the unreliability of power supply, or perhaps that should read the reliability of blackouts, people are forced to keep rechargeable lamps, batteries and other forms of back-up power plugged in so as not to be in total darkness for lengthy periods. In any case, the blackouts are a form of enforced electricity conservation so GPL is doing its bit.
There is still no national recycling drive, though individuals and a few companies have been leading the charge on this. The importation of plastics is way too high and the damage done to the environment as a result of poor disposal is evident. A dangerous landfill site in the city is still in operation years after it should have been capped and likely to be for some time to come. And these are just some of the more blatant problems that require attention. Meantime, our forests are being flaunted to attract the highest bidder. How well we kid ourselves.
