As modern society is becoming more specialized and technologized, much of factories and commodities has developed to make people's life more desirable since the industrial revolution occurred. Naturally, the energy consumption has also increased dramatically to keep operation such facilities on, leading to the point where the energy sources will be depleted in the near future; thus, governments of countries have made a worldwide decision to raise the price of gasoline and electricity. However, in my opinion, it is not the only way to save energy for two main reasons: it is inefficient, and lots of other ways are available and even more effective.
To begin with, the increased price of energy sources from the governments can not affect everyone evenly. Of course, ordinarily people who do not want to waste their money using the high cost energy sources such as gasoline and electricity might decrease much spending; however, it should not be ignored that the rich will continue to utilize their energy sources for their pleasure such as driving a sports car, watching a big movie screen at their home, riding a big-giant boat, etc! According to a study conducted by Seoul National University in 2007, the national government of Korea enacted a new policy regarding the high consumption of energy by its citizens. the policy made the price of gasoline and electricity increased by 30 percent in general. Unfortunately, the policy did not work well and was even retreated after one year of imposing because Even though the poor avoid using such energy-taking facilities with financial burdens, the rich did not care and keep taking advantage of energy for their amenities.
In addition, there are many other ways to save energy such as making a use of renewable energy. Although it would take tremendous amount of time and money to get these projects started, the projects will ultimately end up saving people money and energy in the long run. For example, three years ago, my father decided to install a water heater based on a solar heating water system at our house. The cost of the installment and the device was over a thousand dollars, which made us hesitant at first. However, after the installment, the heater had saved us around 90 dollars on average, cancelling the initial installment cost only after one year of using. Not only were we able to save money, but we were also able to conserve energy by utilizing a natural renewable source. |