Daily Lessons from Life 20-21 September 2014 - Late Night Walk and Haze!!

20 September 2014

Went for a late night walk with 2 friends who were training for the Oxfam100km Trek in Hong Kong in November 2014 last night starting at 9.35 p.m. Unfortunately it rained after 6.3km and despite waiting hopefully for it to stopped, it did not. The 'expedition' was called off and we have a long break chatting and catching up till 3 a.m. Hence, I missed my blog last night.

21 September 2014 - Singapore experiences 'deteriorating hazy conditions' The Straits Times Sunday

Here is the advisory NEA released via Facebook on Sunday night:

Singapore is experiencing deteriorating hazy conditions due to an incoming haze cloud we have detected southwest of Singapore. Air quality is slightly elevated and there are reports of burning smells in the central and eastern regions of Singapore.

As at 7pm today, the 24-hr PSI is 53-56, in the Moderate range. The forecast for the 24-hr PSI over the next six hours is in the high end of the Moderate range. Given the air quality forecast, normal activities can continue. NEA is monitoring the situation closely and will provide subsequent updates should the situation changes. The haze forecast for tomorrow will be issued soon."

Well, we managed to avoid having the haze bothered us this year for the longest time! Guessed all good things MUST come to an end!

Lessons for me are:

1. with the haze back with us, maybe the issue will get a bit more urgency and attention by the government. Alas, the government has been on the ball. Just that the sources of the haze are in Indonesia. The same old perpetrators are probably still burning and oblivious to the 'new and tougher laws' been passed in Singapore, and Indonesia?;

2. This annual visit by the haze for the last couple of years makes it doubly hard for the adults to 'teach' or 'inform' the kids that adults are responsible people and they do not intentionally do the illegal things! Just like the kids should be law abiding when they grow up. How are the kids going to understand this, to them, an obvious crime against Mother Earth, and economically causing a LOT more money to Indonesia and its neighbours like Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand re the negative impact on tourism, cleaning up, respiratory illnesses, etc;

3. the logical solution is to STOP the perpetrators from burning and throw the books of laws on them! Surely with the technologies the governments of the countries involved have, the identification of SOME of the perpetrators should be easy to establish. Adopt the 'take them down 1-by-1' approach and in no time we would have rounded up ALL the offenders.

There were consensus recently with Indonesia signing up to take serious actions. With President Joko's administration, hopefully, the relevant Indonesian agencies will move a lot faster than the previous administration.

I am hopeful and remain positively that this 'annual' haze issue will be resolved by next year!

p/s: If the 'burners' truly could not afford the 'cost of NOT burning to clear the land for the next planting season', lets be generous and help them with a 'non-faze contribution of S$1 each' to STOP burning and use other ecologically friendly methods. The citizens of the nations affected will gladly give IF this is the 'better way' from the perpetrators' perspective. If this still don't work, just JAIL them ALL! Period. Mercy before mercilessness!! :-)