every little bit counts

We're in a time of crises.

No, I did not spell 'crisis' wrongly. I do mean the plural of the word.

Water crisis, coal crisis, energy crisis, gas crisis...
You know how sometimes you say or hear a word too many times, or you stare at it for too long, and it starts to look weird?
The word 'crisis' is becoming like that for me.


We're being encouraged to save on water, on electricity, on anything we can during this time of deficit, which is completely justified because it's something everybody should be consciously (or unconsciously) working on all the time anyway, regardless of whether we're short of, or bathing in, the resources.

Apache office on St Georges Tce, late at night.

A scene of some sorts has been made over the fact that Apache Energy offices were caught, on camera, with lots of lights on in the middle of the night. Our state premier did a fancy, televised address to us humble citizens, beseeching us to cut down on our energy usage, and this company, (supposedly) big on the energy conservation thing, goes and pulls a stunt like this.

When you think about it, it's the big businesses like these that really use a lot of energy. Shopping centres, 658-storey office buildings, factories... They all consume a fatload of energy. The amount of power an average family uses daily is nothing compared to what these places are eating up.


Mom was talking about this crisis thing with her boss. We try to minimise our gas usage as much as we can (by 'minimise', we mean we turn off our central heating at 11 every night). When he heard, mom's boss looks at her incredulously, and then he says:

Why? You won't save enough to make a difference anyway.

And THAT is precisely why water and energy consumption is such a huge issue.


Because everybody thinks that they are so small, they won't make a difference to anything. Compared to the big kids, we're nothing. We are smaller than ikan bilis to the most massive species of whale out there, whatever it is (blue whale?). What we do will barely make a change on the grand scale.


But then, if we're talking about the grand scale of things, shouldn't every little bit count? The problem now is that you and I, our neighbours, our friends, and almost everybody that we know seems to be aware of the supply shortage, but also terribly aware of how small we are.

What we forget is that if I save a little, and you save a little, and everybody else saves a little, and Captain Planet does his thing, we'll end up making not a small difference, but a huge impact.


And this doesn't apply just to the gas thing, or the water thing. It's in everything. Nothing was born big. You think whales got that big overnight? Okay, bad example. Whale babies are massive. But you get the picture.


The point is...

Sometimes we have to start small.
But that doesn't mean we can't think big :)



p.s. I can't believe the Dutch lost!! Their first loss of the tournament and it's the one that ends it for them.

p.p.s.
Happy birthday BENCHAN!!
and you too, Daryll :)