HOT HOT HOT

Aaaaargghhhh!!! My head feels like exploding nowadays everytime i go out and about in town. It is not due to the traffic jams or ever increasing cost of living in this big city, but it is due to the one called C or F, or should i say the increase of C or F in the air. I cant remember the last time when the temperature got so hot almost everyday averaging around 38 degrees Celcius and sometime peaks near 40 Celcius! The highest temperature i have ever experienced was 42C in 1995 when i was in Perth, Australia. Breathing the dry air at 42C in Perth was like breathing in a sauna,you could feel the hot air slowly entering your airways and filling your lungs, it was very uncomfortable.

When i was in high school in the 70s the highest temperature never got past 35C i think. But then that was when Malaysia was a lot less developed and the green area coverage throughout the country was more than today. There were a lot less highrise buildings then and less roads too. The number of cars that burn diesel and petrol and release carbon dioxide and monoxide into the air by thousand of tonnes per day were less. There were less factories that release toxic gases into the air back then. We did not have regular occurance of haze as the result of open burning.

So what has happened to our country since the 70s that contributed to this heat or increase warming? I like to call it as collateral damage of a country going through rapid growth to become a developed nation. In my opinion we are trying very hard to achieve the status at the expense of our environment. Now trying to become a developed nation is not a bad thing, it is just trying to do everything in haste without proper planning, monitoring of policies and enforcement will lead to some screw ups now and then, and when we are dealing with mother nature it will somehow strike back at us in some form or another in the future.

In a material world that we live in today, maximum profit overrides everything else. While there are some responsible corporations operate within the by-laws to achieve their targets, there are equal numbers that do not follow the laws and try to bypass procedures and requirements if they could get away with it. Some would lobby the influential people in important positions to get instant approvals when certain requirements have not been met for their projects prior to commencing, i.e Environmental Impact Studies. Then there are those illegal operations that do whatever they like, like land clearing and stealing timbers in forest reserves and conduct open burning in the process. We hear cases like in Cameron Highlands where some farmers cleared the forest areas to expand their farms without approvals. Everyday we lost so many football field size green areas due to legal and illegal land clearings which contributes to the increase in the air temperature we experience today. Less greenery means less shaded areas, less absorption of solar heat and carbon dioxide, and less production of oxygen for us to breath.

While in the cities where population grows at an alarming rate due to the economic factors, land would become scarce and expensive. The demand for housing for a bigger population would force the authorities to improve the increase in density per acre and lead to highrise apartments boom. The concentration of highrise blocks which house thousands of unit of apartment in a small area become the norm in big city like Kuala Lumpur. Just imagine if an apartment has five air conditioning condenser units blowing hot air into the surrounding, what would thousands of units of apartments will do to the temperature of the air in the city? Take this fact with the thousands of office blocks, factories and at least a million vehicles releasing heat everyday so the occupants can be comfortable inside, we will have a city which behave like an oven,baking itself slowly. The hotter it gets outside the more the usage of air-conditioning increase and the more the release of heat into the air, it is a vicious cycle, almost close to insanity.

So what do we do and how do we escape this heat? I am afraid the damage done is quite extensive already in Malaysia but still we could slow down the process if the government of the day have the political will to re-examine certain policies to balance growth of development with environmental conservation. God created trees for the good of mankind. The trees in so many forms give us food,oxygen for us to breath, shade us when it is hot, protect the slopes and from strong winds, they even protect the beach from erosion and tsunamis. But some human failed to see the importance of the trees and replaced them with concrete jungle due to greed and in the name of progress. Well, mother nature has a way to remind us of our mistakes and is telling us to give her a helping hand to help her recover. It will take time but if we ignore the signs we will face bigger danger when the temperature rises higher. As it is now the polar ice caps is slowly melting, the glaciers are melting and the sea level slowly increasing and in the near future a lot of land will slowly be inundated with water.