Climate Change and Carbon Footprints
I think that many Singaporeans have been rather weary of the weather recently. We've experienced an extremely wet month of June, which caused floods in many areas on quite a few occasions.
While the floods have affected many, most see it as the government's responsibility to improve the drainage of water. Yet, we have to admit that the rains have been particularly heavy, and the government can only do so much when rains are so heavy.
What we fail to see is that climate change is triggering more extreme weather events on earth. The world is experiencing more floods and weather calamities than ever, and scientists warn that the weather patterns are only going to get more extreme. In other words, we can expect more torrential rains that lead to floods, if global greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb.
We also fail to see our part in this, as we continue to drive our cars and run our air conditioners. Every act of using fossil fuel is increasing the intensity of weather changes, and every one of us has a part to play. I do not buy the government's argument that we are a small nation with a minimal impact on the overall global greenhouse gas emissions. We are amongst the highest generators of greenhouse gas (per capita) in the world. Surely we can do something about it. If everyone adopts the attitude of cornering the bigger polluters like China and the United States of America into lowering their emissions while we do nothing, what makes you think that they will bother?
We are a small country by land mass, which means that energy used for transport per capita should be correspondingly lower than large countries. So why are our per capita greenhouse gas emissions so high?
While the floods have affected many, most see it as the government's responsibility to improve the drainage of water. Yet, we have to admit that the rains have been particularly heavy, and the government can only do so much when rains are so heavy.
What we fail to see is that climate change is triggering more extreme weather events on earth. The world is experiencing more floods and weather calamities than ever, and scientists warn that the weather patterns are only going to get more extreme. In other words, we can expect more torrential rains that lead to floods, if global greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb.
We also fail to see our part in this, as we continue to drive our cars and run our air conditioners. Every act of using fossil fuel is increasing the intensity of weather changes, and every one of us has a part to play. I do not buy the government's argument that we are a small nation with a minimal impact on the overall global greenhouse gas emissions. We are amongst the highest generators of greenhouse gas (per capita) in the world. Surely we can do something about it. If everyone adopts the attitude of cornering the bigger polluters like China and the United States of America into lowering their emissions while we do nothing, what makes you think that they will bother?
We are a small country by land mass, which means that energy used for transport per capita should be correspondingly lower than large countries. So why are our per capita greenhouse gas emissions so high?