Monday, February 2, 2009 -

An Inconvenient Truth
("What got us into trouble is not what we don't know but what we know that aren't so")

After watch the excellent documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" by ex US vice-president Al Gore, I can't help to imagine how much impact we, the human race, had done to the very planet we lived in, Earth. Mr Gore, made an excellent presentation on the harms of Global Warming by beginning his speech on the causes of global warming to the harms it had and will caused in the future. One important point in his speech was that we paid very little attention to the matter even though we knew about the devastating effect of Global Warming. The phase, which was stated from the movie, clearly reflects the situation we are in. We do have the knowledge of what Global Warming is, but we are simply not doing anything about it. Gore pointed out a fact,which I strongly agree, that the price of doing nothing won't be for us to play but our children, who will had to live with the consequences of our mistakes.

Lets us examine on what Singapore had done for its role in the Global Warming. Since Singapore takes its education policy very seriously, it is no doubt that educating students on environment issues is part of the educational syllabus. Singapore also spent much time in developing new technologies to help reduce the country greenhouse emission. Through education, we could educate the young allowing them to be more aware of the environmental crisis but as from the phase above, the question is not just about knowing it but what are we going to do. Using technology to combat Global Warming will need time and money during the research phase and that could be already too late for us. In short, from my personal point of view, Singapore had not done much in the environment front.

It is true that Singapore policies on using education and technology to combat Global Warming has shown considerable results over the years. For example, we are seeing more and more students from the younger generation taking clean energy courses in their tertiary education and participating in more environmental events. Improvements in the technology sector had lead to the use of more efficient form of energy such as Solar power and bio fuels. However, they are still pretty much in the initial stages. All these policies will need time for its result to take place, not saying that it is futile, Singapore, and perhaps many other countries, should do is to follow an policy that will provide an immediate effect instead of waiting for 10 years to solve the problem.

Countries like Germany and Japan emphasis heavily on their environmental policies. They encourages their citizens to practice the 3Rs as part of their daily lifestyles but the best part, they reward their citizens for being green. Paying dividends annually to "green" citizens. Their policies had paid off, according to an issue in time magazine, Germany greenhouse outputs did not increased from the last 20 years but saw a decrease as well even with an expanding economy. Its proves that if policies are executed properly, it does not matter whether it requires high tech equipment and others, will work. Thus, Singapore should follow the model set by Germany as what other countries, including the USA, should have done.

The debate on economy vs the Environment still remains inconclusive. It is no doubt environment policies will affect the economy in some manner. Example, the introduction of bio-fuels will seriously affect the oil industries and may even further worsen the economic recession the world is currently undergoing and soared in food prices, will no doubt cause much hunger in developing countries. However, it is a point to take note that with the world, there is no economy as well and the effects are equally disastrous. My conclusion, there should be a strong balance between the two and something we should include in our policies.


Monday, February 02, 2009