Straits Times Forum 30 Mar 09;
I SUPPORT any initiative to highlight the threat of global warming because Mother Earth is indeed suffering. However, I wonder whether switching off lights for an hour can serve more than a symbolic purpose.
Why did the Earth Hour campaign not urge people to switch off energy-guzzling appliances like air-conditioners rather than lights? That would have been a more meaningful gesture.
Anyway, once electricity is generated in power plants, it will be distributed throughout the web of power grids to our households. Either we use it or we lose it, because electricity cannot be stored like water in tanks.
In my view, a long-term sustaining strategy is to develop highly efficient, renewable, clean energy-generating methods. I believe more than half of the electricity on earth is generated by burning fossil fuels, such as coal, natural gas and petroleum. These are the real culprits that emit tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
I am not optimistic that we can replace them entirely by green energy in the foreseeable future. But once we reduce that dependency to less than, say, 40 per cent, we will leave a little better environment to our children than we inherited.
Millions of cars on the road, as well as factories in both developed and developing countries, release immeasurable amounts of greenhouse gases. A highly fuel-efficient engine is the most promising future of the automobile industry.
Last year, we heard a lot of news of efforts to develop green energy when the price of crude oil reached a historic high. Now fuel prices have dropped significantly, and so have cries for renewable energy.
Only coherent, cohesive and lasting efforts - from the micro level of individuals to the macro level of collaboration among nations - can promise a better and healthier Mother Earth for future generations.
Lor Choon Yee
Candles won't help Mother Earth
Straits Times Forum 31 Mar 09;
I HATE to be a party pooper, but in the excitement to switch off the lights for Earth Hour, I fear many may have lost the plot.
I witnessed families switching off a couple of lights and then lighting 20 or more candles. At the Esplanade, the scene was repeated a hundredfold and it is mind-boggling how many candles were lit all over the world.
If the campaign is about global warming and not merely about minimising the use of electricity, then one ought to consider the carbon footprint of a myriad of naked candle flames all over the world.
How much carbon did eco-disciples discharge by switching to candle power?
One also needs to factor in the processes that go into producing candles - their transportation and marketing, for example. These could be far more eco-unfriendly than the careful generation of electricity, which is then efficiently channelled to our homes.
If it was about making sacrifices for the environment, couldn't we have savoured the darkness for one hour?
Errol Goodenough
