As I was Passing: Carbon Print. Your size??

This article was written to be read, digested, shared, reflected and finally acted upon.

"I'm very strong but I need to speak up or else, my enemies (they have become this now) will perish too. My nature was to love them but they didn't. My body was trashed, hammered, stuffed,kicked. My eyes were poked, my limbs cut. I was ripped off my clothes and thrown hot oil. Many of my good friends perished. Lost in numbers and never came back. My enemies are growing by and large every minute and they are doing more and more things to hurt me. I'm very sad that I have to resort to this but I have no choice because my enemies are blinded by so many things and I really need to reach out to them but since I can't speak, I can only act."

In case, you don't know who she was. She is Mother Nature. She came to me in my dream. She asked me to write this post and share it with all of you.

I would not mention about the rest of the world. There are a lot of international environmental agencies, blogs and organization doing all that. I will talk about Malaysia. In Malaysia, there are two groups of people. The Conserver i.e people like me and many others I'll be talking about soon and The "Conveniencer aka Corruptor" i.e those who do not belong to the first group. Please feel free to categorize yourself.

Global warming is like love. Overrated but unappreciated.

Earth's lung disease

Mother Nature has never been more furious just like how the worlds governements and political leaders never fail to highlight environmental protection in each of the G8 meetings and every other environmental conference. See, talking and discussing about a topic is something but taking feasible actions is a whole different ball game altogether. Actions speak louder than words. No?

Truth is, the average Malaysian has no idea what G8 is but they know what G2000 is. ;p Nor does she or he knows, how much there is to be done in terms of environmental protection. In this article, I'll enlighten you on your own Carbon Print. I'm sure you've heard this term a lot.

What is it?

Everything that you buy and use, buy and don't use, eat finish, eat half and throw the rest, switch on off, the house you build, the furnitures you buy and just about everything you do that produces green house gases and cause environmental impact. In short, it's the things you do that can mutate the earth's DNA and cause significant climate change day to day little by little untill it becomes a tsunami, cyclone, heat-waves or other unknown natural disaster that is yet to happen. In Malaysia, this is seen to manifest as massive floods, rise in sea level, landslides, extreme heat in the cities and coastal erosion. In our country, resources are all too easily available so we don't treasure them. Sungguh Malaysian. Sudah terhantuk baru tengadah. But even this is an understatement because sometimes we just don't learn.

What do you really mean?

I mean that when God made the earth, He also knew that carbon dioxide can harm us, hence He gave us Amazons and many other rain forests that will be the oxygen reservoir. Now let's go back to learning some basic science. The green house gases (GHG) like carbon dioxide, methane and ozone are gases that does not allow heat to escape from the lower surface of the earth aka atmosphere because these gases are very powerful in absorbing and emiting infrared radiation. The main source of infrared light that reaches the Earth is from sunlight. Can we ask the sun to stop shining? Hmm, nop. Can we reduce the green house gases then? Yes, we can and we should. But no we don't. Through ~~greed~~ industrial revolution and human advancement activities, we have successfully released more GHG than ever before. It is said that the reported high CO2 levels now is something that was only possible 20 million years ago. A data extracted from ice cores.I mean how far back is it? Even your mind can't think right? Interestingly enough, the greatest rise in the earth's temperature evidently with all that CO2 in the air only took place in the last three decades or so. In just thirty years, we have made tsunami and killed hundreds of thousands of lives. But we don't blame ourselves. We blame Mother Nature.

Where does all these GHG comes from?

Boy, would you be surprised if I tell you? The rubbish generated by us ; takeaway lunch, plastic bags, paper cups, water consumption, travelling, fossil burning, and manufacturing. Every kilowatt (KW) of electricity we use cause the power station to generate 1kg of CO2. That happens when you open the refrigerator door, cook rice, switch the fan on, charge your phone overnight, leave the power plug in the socket but did not on it, leave the printer switch on because of the habit of turning everything on first thing in the morning in the office. I could go on and on. Also every litre of petrol or diesel you use,you release about 2.5kgs of CO2. The fastest and most efficient way for any government in the world to reduce CO2 is to have a world class public transportation system besides sending their delegates to Copenhegan or Rio de Geniro for climate change conferences. Then you ask me. Japan, Taiwan, China. They have the best public transportation in the world right? Indeed they do. But they're also negara pengeluar utama di dunia. Isn't everything made in China? Where's the Yin and Yang, baby?

What's in my rubbish?

Allow me to define the term for you. Garbage contextually means solid waste. It means stuffs that we don't want and don't care anymore because from this point onwards, we literally just don't care. Generally, our garbage contains paper, textiles, metal, plastics, garden waste and food waste. Only the last one is the smell contributor. 90% of the rest can be reduced first, reused then recycled. Besides this, every process of manufacturing and buying generates wastes that we can't see such as factory waste from manufacturing process and mining waste from extraction of raw materials.

Where does all my rubbish go?

Who cares really? All I know is that, I just dump it in my house dustbin. The maids take care of it or someone else will throw it outside the house. I mean, that's why I'm paying Alam Flora, right? See, here's where I think you really need to care. Malaysia is big. It's so big that maybe for another 20 years or so, we can keep opening up landfills to dump our rubbish. Again this is solution at the surface. Tak cukup ke? Just open a new landfill. Find some unknown island or big land. Clear the forest. You just need a piece of land right? How foolish. What we need to be educated upon is what causes the landfills to increase in number. Do you know that "Malaysians create 30,000 MTof rubbish per day!" That's 30 000 000 kg or the weight of around 1200 whales or so. So the very first step towards this never ending ever growing problem is to USE LESS or REUSE, before we even talk about recycling.

What happens to my rubbish there?

It either gets recycled, burnt, dumped at dumpsters or properly burried in landfills. In Malaysia, since awareness of recycling is still at its infancy, the latter two happens more. Dumpsters are open holes in the ground with no proper system with rats and birds swarming everywhere. Landfills means filling the land without having contact with the surrounding environment (air, rainwater,earth.) Basically, you dump but with a system. If the landfills is properly designed, our rubbish is compacted and alternated with layers of clays or plastic. Without landfills, we will be walking with our knees deep in our own trash. The purpose of landfill is to bury in such a way that it doesn't decompose much since there is not much moisture or air unlike dumpsters where trash decompose quickly and releases gases, again GHG like methane into the air. When a landfill is closed, the burried trash remains there. A misnomer to that "it goes somewhere" thought.

So how bad is this thing?

One a scale of 1 to 10, it's a 9.25 and this is no mumbo jumbo. I mean the way I see it, disastrous events has happened by and largly around us. Albeit all the hype, I still believe that the world is not going to end in this year but we're in for some massive destruction. I'm not sure how and when but it will happen. Come on, we are so near Indonesia and Thailand. Now, just how many more times will we be sheltered by that country? No, I'm not being prophetic but you see anything is possible.

How is this my problem?

Are you living on Earth or Mars?