"In what other country, other than our own, can you find a growing insensibility toward energy despite the unprecedentedly high oil prices that have persisted over the past several months?"

So lamented an energy expert on Wednesday noon when the nation's daily power consumption reached an 11-month record high. In support of his assertion, he presented the outcomes of two polls on energy consumption. One was a survey of 700 car owners in six major cities including Seoul, Busan, Daegu and Daejeon on their car use, conducted by the Korea Transport Institute for a week beginning June 23.

More than 48 percent of respondents said they had not reduced their car use at all despite the fact that the price of gasoline has soared over 50 percent in the past six months. Only 28 percent said they had reduced their car use by more than half.

The other surveyed monthly fuel costs for the official cars of 16 Cabinet members including the prime minister. Most of the official cars involved are Hyundai Equus luxury cars, and all have 3,000-cc or larger engines. Their fuel costs kept rising for three months in a row since March.

During the same period, the government urged the public to conserve energy. The administration leadership persistently failed to abide by its own recommendation, however. Some ministers used public transportation like the subway or fuel-efficient hybrid cars, but these turned out to be one-time demonstrations.

More serious is the fact that although prices of power-generating fuels like crude oil, gas and bituminous coal have soared by 50-80 percent this year and international petroleum prices have been rising for more than five years, there's no end to the spiral in sight. The current trend of high oil prices is the longest period since 1961, heralding an era of high energy prices, British Petroleum believes.

Our country's energy consumption takes a reverse course, however. According to the Korea Energy Economics Institute, our total energy consumption and power consumption during the first quarter rose by 5.5 percent and 9.4 percent over the same period last year, respectively. "A power consumption record was already broken this year on Jan. 17 and monthly power consumption is rising by nearly 10 percent over the corresponding months of last year," said an official with the Korea Electric Power Corp.

We have no emergency energy-saving self-help measures like the four-day working week for civil servants in the U.S. state of Utah or the enforcement, beginning July 20, of Beijing's driving bans for cars depending on their plate numbers on alternate days. The same applies to corporations. No urgency is seen here like having 20,000 employees or 90 percent of the workforce work from home once a week as is the case with NEC Electronics of Japan, or American Airlines' policy of charging passengers US$15 per item of luggage.

Why? Because insensibility to energy consumption is deeply rooted in the government and the public, energy experts agree.

This era of high energy prices, examined closely, however, is one of the biggest threats cramping the household, workplace and national economy. Our energy imports topped $95 billion last year, 27 percent of our total imports. The sum surpasses by a large amount the combined exports of semiconductors and automobiles ($76.3 billion), Korea's Nos. 1 and 2 export items.

What's more, South Korea, 28th in the world in population, ranks ninth in energy consumption and sixth in petroleum consumption. Unless we arm ourselves with an energy crisis consciousness by expelling the insensibility toward energy consumption, the numerous high oil-price countermeasures are quite likely to remain unsuccessful.

The column was contributed by Song Eui-dal from the Chosun Ilbo's Business News Desk.