The Global Retreat

Category: Environmental issues
Source: The Big Thaw

Ice on the run, seas on the rise. Global warming no longer exists just in theory, but it is happening right now. Floods, forest fires, rising temperatures get their air time on the news daily. We all know well what is causing it, and it is time we came face to face with it. Here, I shall not be harping on the causal factors, but about the human element in this global crisis.

The earth’s surface has undergone a major face-lift since man walked the earth. Billions of years of evolution have placed us at the top of the food chain. However, is the intelligence bestowed upon us too much for our own good? Animals roamed the earth for billions of years, yet what they seek day to day is simple survival. Man’s astonishing ability of survival has given him energy for another objective – the quest for knowledge and growth. For this quest, we have taken again and again from the Earth. We ripped out the rocky veins of the earth and transformed them into cold grey monstrosities of concrete and steel, replaced trees with towering skyscrapers and factories. However, these creations begotten from the earth now come with a price, moving us an inch closer to our own destruction.

The threat of global warming is unequivocal. The seas crawl closer with the passing of each day. Tuvalu, a group of beautiful South Pacific islands with a population of 12,000, is disappearing slowly under the waves. It is a chilling predicament we’re trapped in (despite the heat). The effects of global warming are becoming irreversible. We cannot simply recreate the glaciers or polar caps after they melt. Sometimes these thoughts leave me hopeless and clueless about what ought to be done. “It’s like watching the statue of liberty melt”. There is an ominous sense of inevitability about the problem.

Over the recent years, there has been much effort to raise the awareness of the situation, and people all over the world have answered the call. Awareness has definitely been raised, yet everyday we wake, we carry on with more or less the same kind of life. How many people actually take action? Live Earth was a classic example of our collective hypocrisy. It was a concert for the environment, yet after the concert, the amount of litter found speaks volumes about the true attitude of people, people who pay lip service to the green movement for that little feel-good factor. It is heartening to see Singapore’s efforts to aid the environmental crisis, but the kind of lifestyle we have been so used to is not something you would expect people to change overnight.

MM Lee once said that the greatest challenge for the new generation would be the challenge of the environment. Looking out to the sea, the idea of the world being drowned is hard to imagine, and it is not something I would ever like to see either.

(490 words)