The not so recent tariff hike of 21% of Singapore’s electricity bills has sparked off fierced debates amongst the local society. It was seen as the government’s act to further increase its national reserves. Several satirical aritcles has mentioned it as the government’s way of supporting the pay rise for it’s ministers. However, if taken from a different perspective, it might lead to several different opinions: to cut down of the consumption of electricy which is generated from the consistent burning of petroleum.
Before the hike, the Singapore governmetn has indeed implemented several policies to curb the increase of electricity consumption of it’s population. The fact that Singapore has been termed as the ‘air-con nation’ severly perpetuates the government’s view that Singaporeans are consuming too much electricty for their own comfort. Singaporeans cannot be blamed for their utilising of airconditioners as it is a rather hot and humid place to live in. The airconditioner indeed serves its purpose to provide relieve from this environment of some sort. However, this serves to right the discourse that society treates ecology in the manner that it has to be exploited for the betterment for human growth or survival.
Besides this seemingly ridiculous act by the government, it has indeed played its part of highlighting the need to save the environment. Policies such as the recyling campaign where an animated rubbish bin emphasized the need to reduce, reuse and recycle has appered on our television screen several times is probably a nostalgic moment for many of us now. But this rather soft approach has taken almost minimal effect on the Singaporean society. Perhaps, the recent tariff hike might serve as a better impact towards Singaporean which would otherwise serve as a purpose to the betterment of the government (and its ministers)Of course this does not go without due criticism. The use of media too would have probably generated as much pollution (from the generating of electricty and newspapers) as the high consumption of electricty.
On the global scale, OPEC has also decided to cut down on its production of oil ( this is termed as such even though they might just be merely suck oil from the ground) so that the prices of oil would not drop any lower than it already has. Though it might serve them better than anyone else, in the long run, perhaps the latent function of this otherwise capitalisitic act would be clearer. Agreeing to my first point, it might actually add up to save our planet. How does this all add up? Firstly, there would be lesser production of oil which, most probably, might lead to a lower consumption of products made from that resource (due to the increased prices). This might lead to less oil being dug up ( the resource might last longer) and the effect of the pollution might also probably reduce (lesser emmision from vehicles). However, such statements will just merely remain as such until the human society realizes such functions. Afterall, resources from the earth that are extracted daily from the earth are not just mere economic comodities that we can exploit for our economic gains, they are also our source of livelihoods (literally)
Perhaps, more awareness could be generated to aid this function. Till then, the earth (along the rest of the organism living on it) might just be heading towards an amargeddon that has been instigated by ourselves (an irony since that is something that we are working so hard to avoid). In accordance to Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six (its a book), hopefully, an elitist group would not conspire to terminate the entire global populace just to achieve this goal.
Perhaps, fire should be founded in the first place?
