Don't promote fence-sitting on global warming: comment on Andy Ho

Straits Times Forum 6 Nov 09;

DR ANDY Ho argued correctly in the first part of his commentary last Friday ('Reasons for Singapore to be cool on global warming') against Singapore being made either an Annex 1 or an Annex 2 country, in the coming Copenhagen Global Warming Treaty. This is supported by the fact that Singapore is still a developing country and our manufacturing base would suffer unduly from a carbon emissions cap.

However, I find the second part of his arguments alarming. Here he depicted doubts that global warming is the consequence of human activities. He also suggested that the scientific evidence be given a full and public hearing.

First, I find it doubtful, that the public is scientifically knowledgeable enough to judge in any way the facts.

Second, there is everything that the Singapore Government has done to combat global warming in the past few years. Among them:

# Most of Singapore's power generators are already on natural gas;

# The Building and Construction Authority awards and incentivises developers to build buildings with green features;

# The Housing Board has installed test-bed programme solar panels on top of selected residential blocks and multi-storey carparks;

# There are compressed natural gas buses and taxis on our roads;

# There is a $1 billion environmental blueprint to make Singapore a clean technology and urban solutions hub over the next five years; and

# There is green labelling of energy appliances.

All these are testimony to Singapore's belief that global warming is due to human activities and it has therefore started acting responsibly as a global citizen.

I do not think we need to encourage more fence sitters or buy time by asking for such revisits of the scientific evidence.

Sylvia Lee (Mrs)

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