Category: Environmental issues
Title: Time to tackle deforestation
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Deforestation, such a common problem, mentioned everywhere. Newspapers are often flooded with articles about how deforestation is destroying our world; and how we humans are commiting chronic suicide. Yet nothing is being done, at least nothing significant. Much of the effects of deforestation damage, especially that which is dealt by Indonesia, is being tasted here in Singapore. I recall how the air quality in Singapore fell to unhealthy levels last October. Walking out in the open, I felt like a piece of salmon getting smoked. I was pretty sure that was how apocalypse would smell like.
Deforestation is one of the main causes of global warming, and to be honest, weather patterns all across the world are kind of screwed up, all thanks to our friendly neighbourhood global warming. For example, warm winters have been experienced recently all across the globe. Frankly, I would be pretty pissed if my country stopped snowing. It is scary how the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" could very well be the fate of our world in the future.
I feel that the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) would be quite an effective way to stop deforestation and subsequently global warming, although there aren't any tangible effects as yet. In my opinion, deforestation is carried out primarily in the pursuit of economical profits. Once again, money is the root of all evil. But the selling of "credit" for improvement in emission of greenhouse gases sounds like an innovative and attractive way to improve the situation. I can empathise with the Indonesia point of view, and i understand how hard it is to let go of money in your hands. But please, think about your grandchildren and help save the world.
A question to ponder though: What gives us the right to clear these forests by the hectares? What gives us the right to cut down these living, breathing (sort of) trees? They have been on the Earth much longer than any one of us have. They have existed probably since the beginning of time, and furthermore they support our puny, selfish little lives on this earth by acting as a air filter to give us nice, clean oxygen to breathe. So what allows us to desolate large areas of these trees for our own selfish purposes? Is it just because we have limbs and can move freely while they don't? Or because we have brains and they don't? I may just be a secondary school student, and there may be many complicated issues in this world that I am neglecting while writing this response, but what i do know, is that we are, as a matter of fact, commiting chronic suicide.
