KUCHING, April 23: Collective attention, ingenuity and resources on a global scale is needed now to stabilise and reverse present trends of rising global temperature changes, said social activist Datuk Seri Ang Lai Soon.
According to Ang, the 51st anniversary of Earth Day celebration yesterday (April 22) drew everyone’s attention to this urgent and potentially irreversible threat to human societies and the planet from humanity-created climate change.
“The World Wide Fund (WWF) for Nature Malaysia is to be congratulated over the years for its splendid efforts in tackling climate change.
“Let us all, without exception, do our part to help solve what is undeniably the most serious universal long-term problem we have to face. To cut down greenhouse gas emissions,” he said in a statement today.
Ang noted after four years in the wilderness, the United States, one of the world’s greatest polluters is today hosting the virtual Leaders Summit On Climate Change and its new president has gathered some 40 nations, big and small, to this summit.
Surprisingly, he said, Malaysia is not included nor invited, though every year this country is in the news for the wrong reason.
“For a few months almost annually, thick smog or haze would blanket almost the whole country with the people taken ill and the economy suffers, in fact in the Asean region as well.
“Now with the Covid-19 the whole situation will be totally untenable if the haze or smog is here as well. The present unbearable hot weather is giving us an early warning. Do something now and do not take things for granted,” he added.
Ang pointed out that to leave out an important country like Malaysia in any global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or to contain the highly contagious virus is obviously a mistake.
He said scientists suggest that the resulting pressure on the planet’s finite resources is being manifested in rising global temperatures, already creating very uncertain worldwide weather patterns and changes in the climate with worldwide effect on sea levels and current agriculture.
He opined this is, of course, an oversimplification but serves to show climate change made by human activity is a problem that cannot be ignored.
“There are no simple short-term fixes and the time scale of positive action showing positive results is measured in decades, not years,” he opined.
He said the United Nations (UN) recognised this, having held its first annual UN conference on Climate Change in Berlin in 1995.
“At the 2016 Conference, the president of the UN General Assembly called for the global economy in all sectors to be transformed to achieve a low emissions global economy. In short, to date little positive action has been taken.
“With Covid-19, no country is safe until every country is safe. The same is true with environment. To leave out an important country like Malaysia in any global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or to contain the highly contagious virus is obviously a mistake,” he said. — DayakDaily
