Global warming in Malaysia? You're kidding.

Some readers commented that I hardly touch on local topics on global warming. I agree and I too wish that our local media finds the topic worthy enough to report.

Let me ask a question. Being in a hot country, does anyone really notice if its a couple of degrees hotter or cooler today from yesterday? I doubt so. We're holed up in airconditioned offices, complexes and homes most of the time to notice anyway. We blame the warming of our highlands like Genting and Frasier's hill on rampant development of hillslopes rather than the ravages of invisible greenhouse gases. I guess if we can't see it, the problem doesn't exist

Its not that we don't care about the environment. Sure we make noise about polluted rivers, indiscriminate logging, land-clearing and toxic waste dumps but for different reasons. The truth is that we hate foul smells, soil erosion, losing nice greenery from land clearing and having our underground water poisoned.

These are serious issues no doubt but does anyone really pay any attention to the massive amounts of carbon we release and how it stands to affect our children's lives in the future? Like I said, for most people, if you can't see it, it doesn't exist.

I suppose its normal for people not to care about something until they lose it. I've no doubt we will one day see unusually ferocious storms that flatten entire kampungs, rising food prices due to more failed crops, higher disease rates, knee-high water in Georgetwon Penang and Port Klang, and generally some kind of humanitarian disaster that seem to have no visible cause.

The trouble with that scenario is that by the time it happens, it is already too late.

Sometimes our blessing is also our curse. Because the drastic effects of global warming is less visible in the tropics, we worry less about the weather. But its also a curse in that we've desensitized ourselves to a growing problem that could kill us. We are like frogs being slowly boiled alive.

Because our local climate and weather can be clobbered by carbon emissions from as far away as China and Russia as theirs are to us, it is naive to think that we could solve the problem by ourselves. A global problem needs a global solution. That means everybody working together, which is why we have worldwide commissions like Kyoto and the IPCC.

Its not just supposed to be a talk shop. Its supposed to be a do shop where governments collectively hammer out their plans for global change, from educating their citizens to turn out the lights when not in use to strict legislation of industrial carbon emissions within their countries. And these actions are supposed to become national policy, filtered down to local city levels complete with incentive and enforcement.

But I've long woken from that dream. China and India does recognize the problem but prefer to take the cautious approach (i.e. do little or nothing) because it may hurt their economy. The government of the US, the world's no. 1 emitter of greenhouse gases, doesn't recognize the problem, also because it may hurt their economy. The decision of these 3 giants plus the European Union will in my opinion determine the fate of man and whether he will still exist a century from now.

This is why many of my blog entries have so far dwelt on their actions and opinions.

So does it matter if we Malaysians care about global warming or not? Personally I don't think it'll make a difference one way or another because the problem has grown way too big for any single community to handle. The only thing we can do now is soften the impact by practicing energy-saving consumption habits and I've outlined several already.

In the bigger scheme of things I think the greatest contribution we or any country can make today is to be a such a great leader in the active reduction of greenhouse gas emissions that it inspires other countries to do the same. Will we ever become that torch bearer? Your guess is as good as mine.