1.5-degree Celsius seemed like a regular temperature to us. However, it's an important temperature to maintain in the earth. Back in 2015, the idea of keeping the earth's temperature below 1.5-degree Celsius was set in the Paris Climate Change Agreement. Scientists believe that the global temperature above 1.5 degrees can make a huge impact towards the climate. The higher the degree mean more heatwaves, higher sea levels, and the complete destruction of coral reefs.
The root cause of climate change is the enormous amount of carbon emission. Carbon emission is created by many processes. The largest carbon producer is the use of fossil fuel energy.
source: dw.com
All of the countries that signed the Paris agreement, Indonesia is one of them. It's true that Indonesia has been struggling on cutting these carbon emissions. Indonesia has various natural diversity starting from solar, wind, geothermal, bioenergy and hydropower. However, we are too comfortable with using the old kind of living: Fossil fuel. Our dependency towards fossil fuel increase as the demand as well increase. Indonesia has a great population as will still grow as the birth rate rise. As the developing country, most of the people are consumptive and having their own private vehicle is a necessity.Transportation is a big contributor towards fossil fuel uses in Indonesia. Every family in the city can have at least 1 car for them, which of course creates a huge amount of carbon emission.Since most people have a fossil fuel-based vehicle, then it's hard for the government to turn their eyes to renewable energy. They are already comfortable with consuming fossil fuel.
source: autoevolution.com
There are also some trust issues in the government. The government prefers a big oil company that has controlled energy for a long time than a new renewable energy company. They tend to not pay attention to it and invest more in the oil company. They don't trust easily on renewable energy company because of politics. In which, the politician who has a huge oil company think that implementing a renewable energy will make no profit at all towards the government, they think they will experience loss.Another challenge in Indonesia is that Indonesia is one of the biggest exporters of coal. Coal generates carbon emission as high as fossil fuel but their resources are a lot more.
source: mongabay.com
Even though Indonesia has a high dependency towards fossil fuel, it's an irony that fossil fuel's resources are scarce while the demand is high. In order to solve this problem, the government invites foreign investors to help the oil company. And the government have subsided over 30 million rupiahs for fossil fuel. The government also import 155 million barrel per year. This is an irony. If we don't have enough resources then why depend so much on it? We have other alternatives then importing and subsiding fossil fuel.
source: mongabay.com
The government has spent trillions of rupiah for fossil fuel investment. It's a huge amount. But if we compare on investing towards renewable energy, it might be expensive for the first time but as a long-term period, renewable energy lasts longer and become cheaper than fossil fuel.source: mongabay.com
The goal of maintaining the earth's temperature is a huge challenge for us. But, what we need is an agent of change leader that play a role in politics. Both community and government should support renewable energy for a better future. We cannot always depend on the old technologies, we need to change our insight towards new renewable energy. Times changes. For instance, in the past, people use mail to communicate with each other but today it's replaced with a more advanced and sustainable technology: the internet. These kinds of things occur too in the energy world. Fossil fuel is scarce, but renewable energy is not. It's time for us to change. Let's turn our eyes to renewable energy for a better future