Depending on your perspective, Sydney in the upcoming days will be either the safest place in the world or the most dangerous. Why do I say so? Well it’s APEC 2007-Sydney! Leaders and their entourages from 21 countries representing 40% of the world population will be descending on this city .To safeguard the dignitaries, 7th of September has been declared a holiday for Sydney in order to minimize traffic flow and residents have been advised to plan for a weekend out of town. I guess the fishing spots and hiking trails will be mighty crowded. So far traffic has been rerouted and Anzac Parade (one of the main roads) not far from where I stay is going to be cleared at certain timings over the week to come. As I write this, a chopper just flew past overhead. Part of the stepped up security measures no doubt.
Sydney did a remarkable job in the 2000 Olympics, the stadium is a magnificent piece of architecture and the security did a pretty neat job in maintaining order. I hope for all our sakes they repeat the sterling performance. The current landscape is unlike 2000, it’s a gloomier world these days with epic natural disasters, wars and rampant acts of terrorism. Year 2000 was a huge celebration for mankind, where we ushered in a new millennium and laid to rest the yakking of sulky doomsayers. I remember holding a big barbeque party for my Polytechnic classmates back then. In the past 7 years, things have changed a lot: 9/11 in September 2001, Indian Ocean Tsunami 2004, Hurricane Katrina 2005, possibility of an impending US recession and even Harry Potter plots grew darker to reflect the changing times.
Some issues I hope the leaders will address are: global warming, renewable energy, widening wealth-gaps and auditing of international charities. Venerable MM Lee himself has been concerned about the global warming issue and has consulted Holland on how to build dikes. Global warming is a huge concern for island nations and it’s not something to be taken lightly. Millions of lives are at stake here it’s not something that will happen in the far future that time is well in our lifetime! With the Industrial Revolution (IR), humankind birthed the monstrous entity named Corporation, which hastens our progress towards inevitable doom. Greenhouse gases have increased at an exponential rate since the IR, causing glaciers and ice masses to melt; climate changes. I hope that for once the oil sheiks and executives of petroleum corporations will put obsessing about profits aside and think of the future, of their fellow men for a change. Suffer a loss in profit but we get to exist longer as a species. Sacrifice is often needed for progress. Open the safes and take out the promising research, do not seek to hinder the progress of alternative energy. Do not see an undermining of profits as a threat to the corporation; it is the corporation that is the threat to our very existence! Humans should rein in the corporation and not let the profit charts take away our rights to exist. Civilization is so very fragile; we learn from history that great civilizations can vanish in a twinkling of an eye. If we do not start actively using safer alternative energy forms it will be too late.
Al Gore has stated very plain facts on his documentary An Inconvenient Truth. He showed glaciers and ice masses melting, weather changes and some changes in ecology. The fact is the damage goes deeper than that. Increased temperatures also bring about an increased rate of temperature-sensitive mutations in viruses and those dormant viruses locked in by the last Ice Age will emerge. Mosquitoes thriving in warmer climates will now be able to travel to what used to be cooler places on Earth and spread hemorrhagic fever. We have no immunities against these new biological threats. Natural cycles of insects are altered and may cause breeding to grow out of control. Warmer weather also mean that the hurricanes grow more energetic, causing greater damages. Katrina is only a show of what’s coming on Nature’s agenda. The only reason why there’s been little public paranoia is because the education has not sunk in. People need to see real world impact before they realize the gravity of the situation, often not it’s already too late to remedy.
The critical task that lay before mankind in this century is to come up with energy efficient transportation, effective alternative energy sources, improvements on recycling technologies and methods of waste disposal. For example Brazil is doing a great job at biofuels. Also places like Ireland are using tidal arrays to harness the currents for good use. Developments in high temperature superconducting magnets will help to secure alternative energy sources as reliable. Surfaces that aid in catalytic combustion will also be an area of research as well as molecules with ability to increase the octane power of biofuels. USA is a critical player in this global warming issue as it is the largest contributor of greenhouse gases. More US states must start using alternative means of energy to break OPEC’s dominance.
Next is about wealth gaps. People should have a minimal standard of living worldwide shouldn’t they; after all it’s the 21st century? Some people rationalize: oh that poor people may not have the material luxury but they are happy blah blah. These people should probably stay a month in Botswana with the Aids victims and the famine victims in Zimbabwe or tsunami victims in Sulawesi. Others are simply apathetic over what happens elsewhere in the world as long as they themselves are living in their comfortable wells. Currently the rich are getting ridiculously rich while the poor starve to death. One end of the spectrum we have people gorging on Big Macs until their BMI is 35 and the other end we see malnutritioned people at 17 BMI. Think about the inches you will add to your waist and the poor people in Zambia before you take that bite. Perhaps you should be thinking of how to send that Big Mac to a starving kid. What makes it worse is that wealth is so poorly distributed. The richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of global household wealth. Alone, the richest 1% of adults alone owned 40% of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the world total. In comparison the bottom half of the world adult population owned barely 1% of global wealth. This is from a study by WIDER. We see people like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and George Soros donating away a large part of their assets. This is admirable and really necessary for proper wealth distribution. What about the rest of us? Read the WIDER report and find out where you stand and do something. There are now indications that biofuels may bring about a change in Africa. Tough strains of bioefficient crops can be engineered to grow in Africa. That spells hope but in the mean time they are still starving.
Last of all we need to have an inbuilt transparency and auditing for International Charities. There are unscrupulous and selfish people in this world who work for charities and siphon money off these organizations. Charities have innate operating costs but surely there is no need for an extremely posh office or for executives to fly all over the world in First Class or to pay themselves huge salaries. Charities need to be accountable to the public. Their priority is first and foremost to famine victims and they should be morally and legally accountable if charity funds are not used in the most efficient way possible. There should never be the situation where we donate 10 dollars and only $0.50 goes to the victim. Read about corruption here.
