|
 A country where the population can reduce by 20
percent
the domestic consumption of electric energy can perfectly well
raise by 20 percent its educational potential, fix its roads,
develop science and technology, defend the Amazon and
provide all houses with water and sewers.
By Cristovam Buarque
During the past weeks, national media have shown an unhappy and
pessimistic Brazil. These same days, we suffered a feeling of institutional failure due to
the behavior of politicians and of economic failure caused by government shortsightedness.
The people’s self-esteem reached dramatic lows. We felt demoralized in behavior as in
strength. However, the more I observe the world around me, the more pride I have in the
Brazilian people and the potential of reaction of our country.
No other country, in the past ten years, has been able to emerge
from a dictatorship without revenges, or to deconstruct authoritarian waste without
traumas. Neither to elaborate a democratic Constitution without paralyzing the country or
to elect a President and remove him from office, within democratic rules. We were able to
keep his constitutional substitute (Itamar Franco) without any embarrassment and to
control a permanent inflation before it grew into hyperinflation. In the meantime we
banned a senator and arrested a judge who stole public funds.
Now we face a tremendous energetic crisis due to governmental
irresponsibility, but have managed to cut, on the spot, up to 20 percent of domestic
consumption even before rationing begins. No other country managed, in so little time, to
overcome so many setbacks created by the military, politicians and governments.
If on one hand it is frustrating to see that all this effort is
to avoid tragedy, without any benefits for the country—as if we were all goalkeepers,
without the right to score a goal—on the other hand it is exciting to see Brazilian
potential. A country where a people can transform into victory what seems like tragedy. Of
all our problems, the greatest is in the lack of a conduct that might permit us to use
this potential to construct and not to avoid destruction; to efficiently use public
resources and not to ban their thieves; to efficiently use energy and not to avoid
blackouts; to make the country grow and not only to stop inflation.
A country where the population can reduce by 20 percent the
domestic consumption of electric energy can perfectly well raise by 20 percent its
educational potential, fix its roads, develop science and technology, defend the Amazon
and provide all houses with water and sewers. If we have the competence to save when it is
needed, we can also construct, transform blackout into light. A people who can save kw
have the capacity to develop the IQ of its children.
If we shift over to our GDP all the success obtained in the
reduction of energetic consumption, Brazil would have $73 billion a year to invest in that
which could transform us, from a wasteful country in benefit of a few, into a country of
welfare for all. Just 20 percent would be enough to abolish social exclusion from the
country and another $58.4 billion would be left over for social and economic investments
that Brazil needs.
The tragedy of blackouts, that ultimately bother and humiliate
us, putting us thirty years behind, withdrawing in comparison to other countries, can act
as a way for us to discover the potential of our people when mobilized. A simple change in
motivation of this mobilization and Brazil would be what we want—and that governments
have insisted in preventing us to be.
Starting this June, the National Congress begins the elaboration
of the National Budget for 2002—the states, the Federal District and the
municipalities will do the same. This is the moment for the people, who mobilize to save
energy, to mobilize also for the correct use of the resources of its taxes. If this
mobilization had happened years ago, listening to all of those who warned us of the
energetic crisis, we would not be in risk of blackouts.
Every cent of the budget can be compared to a kilowatt of our
hydroelectric plants. If we use the money correctly, starting 2002, for social
investments, citizenship will not fail those who today are excluded by poverty because it
will have been abolished.
The blackouts can help us awaken our perception of waste and
mistakes in the use of our resources. Light is in the correct use of the resources Brazil
already has. If we awaken, one day it will be said that Brazil is a country where the
light of our future came from the blackout of our present. This happens many times in the
life of an individual and can happen, also, in the history of a people.
Cristovam Buarque, former governor of the Federal
District, is professor of the University of Brasilia and author of the book O Colapso
da Modernidade Brasileira, of 1992. Homepage: www.cristovambuarque.pro.br His e-mail:
cbuarque@tba.com.br
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