In the land of the blind, the one eye man is King!
This old but wise adage still rings true today because sight and insight to problems even in this day and age is still lacking as the masses are still trapped in their mindset, incapacitated by their own paradigm paralysis.
Today, most of us ought to be aware as well as be concerned about human caused global warming and climate change, yet only a few of us are taking positive and practical actions to walk our talk because we are not prepared to be inconvenienced.
We love our energy guzzling and waste creating lifestyle and while we pay great lip service to the cause of tackling climate change and global warming, we, if anything at all, do very little to match our words with deeds.
We are, generally, blind and being blind, we perceive the whole picture of the dire state of the environment only in parts; not the whole.
Just like as in the famous Sufi story of the blind men and the elephant, every blind man perceive the unfamiliar animal according to their own "feelings", the one who felt the elephant's trunk insisted that the elephant is like a snake; the tail, a snake; the belly, a wall and the leg, a tree.
Even if we combined the collective intelligence of the blind men towards the attempted deciphering of an unfamiliar animal (problem), we will never get any wiser or further.
What is needed is a sighted person, even half a sighted person will do: with just one eye or a pair of partially sighted eyes, to see the whole picture.
Today's problems call for new solutions, not those of yesterdays but of visionary caliber.
The vision that the whole Cosmos is built upon the twin foundation of sustainability and renewal-ability, without which, the system will self implode and collapse
The Earth sustains and renews itself, with or without human beings and really, human beings are redundant to the Earth in so far as the long term viability of the Earth is concerned.
Imagine planet Earth devoid of homa sapiens, plants will continue to thrive, animals will continue to survive on the thriving plants and other animals that feed on plants.
Take away the plants and there will be no animals and humans.
We need just one, not, two eyes to see the dire state of the environment we are in, but the good news is that, we still have hope to turn the environment around, if we act very tough and act now.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Broga Incinerator is Off: Good News or Bad News?
The Broga Incinerator project is now officially, "Burnt", thanks to unsustainable cost, that's the official reason from the Malaysian government.
While the people, especially those in the vicinity of the proposed project cheered and breathed a sigh of relief, ought others follow suit?
The problem of waste disposal is faced by every community and nation globally and the more "modernized" and "industrialized", the bigger and more complex the problem.
While incinerating waste is one of the many alternatives in waste disposal, it has it's very serious residual waste and gas emission problems.
It is a fact that burning common plastics like PVC releases toxic and carcinogenic substances like Dioxin and the concentrated residue at the end of the incineration process needs disposal too, and more often that not, these are concentrated toxic waste.
My take of the situation is that the Malaysian government finally woke up to the fact that they themselves may not be able to meet the strict environmental standards they have legislated, so better to abort now then face the inevitable embarrassment down the road.
However, if we look at the solid waste disposal problem in Malaysia, we cannot escape from the fact that continue the "business as usual" basis is going to bury us all in waste.
If we continue to generate and landfill waste at the rate we are doing now, sooner or later, we are going to ran out of land.
Looking across the Causeway, in land scarce Singapore, they are even running out of land to bury the dead, let alone rubbish!
Singapore had gone the incineration route for more than two decades already and had it not been so, she would have another hill, Bukit Sampah, besides Bukit Timah.
It is true that incineration always cost more, ton for ton of rubbish, but buried rubbish is not something that will go away within a generation or two; it will come back to haunt our future generations.
The only long term viable and sustainable way out seems to lie in the 4Rs: Review, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.
If the net total of necessary waste can be reduced to its absolute minimum, whether it is incineration or burying, either one will be equally viable.
Waste sorted at source is the way to go.
Organic waste ought to be composted and returned to the land as food for other organism. Reducing, reusing and recycling will help but the best of all is for all of us to review our consumption habits: Do I really need to consume this, in this wasteful manner?
Eventually, when we waste not, we want not!
While the people, especially those in the vicinity of the proposed project cheered and breathed a sigh of relief, ought others follow suit?
The problem of waste disposal is faced by every community and nation globally and the more "modernized" and "industrialized", the bigger and more complex the problem.
While incinerating waste is one of the many alternatives in waste disposal, it has it's very serious residual waste and gas emission problems.
It is a fact that burning common plastics like PVC releases toxic and carcinogenic substances like Dioxin and the concentrated residue at the end of the incineration process needs disposal too, and more often that not, these are concentrated toxic waste.
My take of the situation is that the Malaysian government finally woke up to the fact that they themselves may not be able to meet the strict environmental standards they have legislated, so better to abort now then face the inevitable embarrassment down the road.
However, if we look at the solid waste disposal problem in Malaysia, we cannot escape from the fact that continue the "business as usual" basis is going to bury us all in waste.
If we continue to generate and landfill waste at the rate we are doing now, sooner or later, we are going to ran out of land.
Looking across the Causeway, in land scarce Singapore, they are even running out of land to bury the dead, let alone rubbish!
Singapore had gone the incineration route for more than two decades already and had it not been so, she would have another hill, Bukit Sampah, besides Bukit Timah.
It is true that incineration always cost more, ton for ton of rubbish, but buried rubbish is not something that will go away within a generation or two; it will come back to haunt our future generations.
The only long term viable and sustainable way out seems to lie in the 4Rs: Review, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.
If the net total of necessary waste can be reduced to its absolute minimum, whether it is incineration or burying, either one will be equally viable.
Waste sorted at source is the way to go.
Organic waste ought to be composted and returned to the land as food for other organism. Reducing, reusing and recycling will help but the best of all is for all of us to review our consumption habits: Do I really need to consume this, in this wasteful manner?
Eventually, when we waste not, we want not!
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