In the words of Chicken Little, "The sky is falling!" and you'd better believe it.
I know that there is a better place we go to when we die. :)
But, in the meantime, we can do something a bit more responsible. Hey, nobody said it's easy. Good things don't come cheap.
- use more fuel-efficient transport (drive a petrol sipper, not a guzzler, take the bus or train, or walk)
- increase the temperature on the air-conditioning thermostat (or turn off the air-cond altogether)
- buy products that use less raw material and energy in the production and distribution process
- push for government and corporate policy (and practice) that reduce greenhouse gas emissions (turn up the heat on politicians)
- bottomline is, use less energy, burn less fossil fuels (petrol, gas, oil, coal), emit less CO2
It may already be too late to stop the disaster, but who knows? Wanna take the risk?
4 comments:
Not a day goes by without some news break on global warming or a climate change-related alert. ("Scientists take a second look at biofuels" http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/30/business/biofuel.php, "Profound climate changes in store, experts say" http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/29/news/climate.php) Yes, press for more fficient, dependable and useable public transport, and in general, use less energy! Malaysia has chosen to lead other developing nations in one wrong area. Energy consumption per head, in kg oil equivalent, was 2318 in Malaysia in 2003, compared to 1065 in Brazil and 642 in Colombia - two other equitorial countries (source: The Economist Pocket World in Figures 2007).
Whoa, thanks for the hard data and references. Very befitting of a soon-to-be PhD. :)
Yea, Malaysia is very energy inefficient, as a developing nation. I don't have the figures, but I remember reading or seeing a chart somewhere that Malaysia's per capita energy consumption is on par with some (developed, temperate climate) European nations. But despite all that, Malaysia still managed to rank ninth place in the global Environmental Performance Index 2006 (www.yale.edu/epi/), helped a lot by strong performance in the environmental health component of that index. There is hope yet!?!
The Environmental Performance Index is an interesting, though somewhat misnomered, statistic. Half of the weightage of the index (0.5 out of 1) comprises domestic living environmental factors (drinking water, sanitation, indoor pollution, etc), which closely correlate with income level. It's not surprising that the lowest performers are also the poorest countries. The cleanest, healthiest living environments are enjoyed by those who can afford it. Biodiversity and natural resource management - including deforestation, ecological protection - only account for 20% of the score. It's still a wonder how Malaysia managed to rank ninth. It's also worth noting that we did dismally on another assessment, the Climate Change Performance Index. Malaysia ranked second last among 56 industrialised and rapidly industrialising countries. There will be gaps and biases in that method as well. Indices can summarise and compile a lot of information, but details get shrouded. Little help for policy making. Whatever our ranking, there's much, much work to be done.
Hi HL, Mary here. Came across yr blog while blog hopping. Like your posts about diving. Should write more about that! And put pics too.
I took a class on global ecosustainability last interim and found out Malaysia want to burn down jungles to build palm oil plantations for ethanol. (just thought I should say something related to this post). :)
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