Earth Day

Listening to: Ryan Adams
“The word is on the street that the fire in your heart is out.”

Yesterday, 22 April, was Earth Day and what did everyone do to play our part in taking care of the environment? I’d like to take this moment to strongly appeal to everyone that we don’t need to join environmental movement groups or hug a tree or drive a Toyota Prius in order to take a stand in this matter. Switch off lights or appliances when they are not in use or even turn off the water when you are brushing your teeth. If you don’t need it, take the extra step, and turn it off. It doesn’t take much but the benefits reaped, are huge.

For example, when Monash University showed its commitment to Earth Hour by appealing to students in all its campuses to switch off non-essential energy sources for one hour on March 31, it showed that in the Peninsula campus, there was a 29% decrease in electricity demand and an average 23% for all campuses. This is in one hour alone, so imagine how much we can help our planet, if we did this everyday at every opportunity?

So we can make a difference. It’s just that most of the time we have too much of the tidak apa (roughly translated it’s no problem or live or let live) attitude to even kick off in the right direction.

I attended a seminar yesterday by a research student who was studying the microbial diversity in peat swamp forests, 60% of which are located in Peninsula Malaysia and Indonesia but which are rapidly being cleared away for development projects. Peat swamplands support a wide variety of endangered species like the tiger, Asian elephant, Malaysian tapir and the Sumatran rhino. Forest fires and rapid clearing are just one of the many problems they face. What will it take for the authorities, whoever they may be, to realize just how important these ecosystems are and why they must be protected and how taking them away will eventually affect all of us in the long run? These forests do not apparently receive any formal protection.

There are many people who are actively trying to campaign for their protection and I am not clear about its progress but things have got to start moving with the times, people have got to start waking up and doing something about these things. Most of us are powerless because we may not have the money, seniority, authority or platform to do something about it, but I think awareness and education is the way to start.

So please, don’t just let Earth Day be the day you turn off those lights.
Make it a commitment because we have nothing to lose.

Not yet anyway.