Efficiency Matters?

“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

-Brundtland Report in 1987-

Kindly keep this inside your head while you keep on reading this entry. Do also remember that this is not an academic writing. Hence, I may not refer to any external knowledge anymore and thus, again, you may critic the credibility of this entry, take the knowledge you may get from it and ponder or critic, if you will.

One particular thing that is most commonly relates to sustainability is energy efficiency. This includes electricity, petrol, and all types of fuel – perhaps even your own, energy I mean. There are numerous perceptions on what efficiency really is. For the purpose of this entry, I will use one of them, which reference is ignored due to limitation of memory:

“Efficiency is when you can do more things with the same resource,”

-Anonymous-

In other words, for example, instead of flying to Istanbul to grab a kebab, now with the same amount of fuel with an efficient personal jet (assuming you own one), you can continue flying to Paris to grab an Escargot Bourguignon, then off to Madrid for a delicious Seafood Paella and a quick stop at Zurich for a warm Chocolate with Cheese Fondue.

To put simply, with efficiency, you can do more things with the same amount of resource you have, which goes back to the earlier stated simpler definition (which instead I chose to elaborate on with such a long and unnecessary description of famous international cuisines).

This concept tracks back to the time when steam engine was invented by James Watt around early 18th century. This perhaps may be the key point of human civilization when this particular innovation initiated the Industrial Revolution in UK during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Transportation, manufacturing, agriculture and many industries started to grow at a significant rate and remarkably changed the social economic in Europe, America and subsequently the rest of the world.

In other words, human activities grew rapidly. Consequently, human population increased at a much different rate than before. Thus, with more activities, and greater population growth, more resources are necessary. The initial idea of an efficient transportation envisioned by the genius invention of the steam engine created more potential human activities and consequently created more demand for more resources.

Instead of one kebab made with bread, meat, vegetables produced with a certain amount of electricity, gas, water, and so on, now with the idea of efficiency, we can also have an escargot, paella and a fondue made of more resources, i.e. more electricity, gas, water, and so on.

It's inevitable to summarize that at this time of human civilization, it doesn’t make that much difference if you buy a petrol efficient car, energy efficient buildings, or turn off your lights for one hour in a year. When you see a sale by the retail store, $10 for 3 pairs of Ted Baker’s jeans, if you believe that human, in general, will buy only one jean for a less than $4 instead of grabbing all 3 pairs of them, let’s start talking about saving the planet.

But with one low-wattage light bulb at a time, I'm sure we're working on towards the right direction.

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Hi, I am NJB. I am new here and hope the above entry is a good start for me to contribute more in this blog in the future. Cheers.