Spain cuts speed limit and turns out lights

Here is the change Dems will give us


Spain cuts speed limit and turns out lights

Spain has seen the future and it is slow, dim and uncomfortable. A swingeing series of energy-saving measures announced by the Spanish government may be a foretaste of the kind of policies which will be forced upon an energy-hungry industrial world in the coming decades.


To protests from motorists and mockery in parts of the press, the Socialist government plans to cut motorway speed limits to 50mph and town speeds to 25mph. New austerity rules will be imposed on the air conditioning and heating of all public buildings. Street-lighting will be cut by half.

Almost 50 million low-energy light bulbs will be handed out by the government in an attempt to drive high-consumption bulbs out of the market in the next four years. The government will also sponsor a project intended to introduce a million electric or hybrid electric-petrol cars on to Spanish roads by 2014.

The sweeping plans, intended to reduce Spain's huge dependency on imported oil by 10 per cent, were mocked by one newspaper as an "operation light bulb" which was doomed to fail. However, the Industry Minister, Miguel Sebastian, adopted the celebrated exhortation to patriotism and self-sacrifice of the US President John F Kennedy when he took office in 1961. It was time, he said, for Spaniards to "ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."

"Every time we lift our feet off the accelerator, we are improving GDP and employment," Mr Sebastian said. "The era of cheap energy has passed."

The energy shock caused by the boom in oil prices in the past year has hit Spain especially hard. Spain has scant energy resources of its own and is more dependent on fossil fuels for its energy needs – 84 per cent – than any other European Union country.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/spain-cuts-speed-limit-and--turns-out-lights-to-save-fuel-881401.html