It is a cliche for government leaders who decide to hike fuel prices to ask the rakyat to ‘change lifestyles’ - a term borrowed from environmentalists have called for it in view of dwindling world resources and threatening global warming. Are they the same thing? If they are not, the bluff must be exposed.
If we look into the call for ‘changing lifestyles’ by ‘greenies’, what is meant includes reducing energy consumption, de-carbonising the cities, abstaining from consumption which drives our ecosystems and species into extinctions, reducing waste etc.
What do the politicians want people to do in terms of `changing lifestyles'? To adjust to the increasing fuel prices, are they asking people to cook less, travel less, eat less, socialise less, in short, tighten your belts and live your life less so the corporate leaders and politicians will upscale their lifestyles?
There are evidently big gaps between what `changing lifestyles' meant originally and what these politicians mean. Actually the gaps are big enough for the politicians to hide a few elephants. In order to support the national car's sales, the politicians are under-developing public transport. They cannot find the millions to buy or subsidise the buses to improve bus frequencies yet they can find the billions to build non-efficient highways and bridges which accommodate more traffic on the roads. So do they really mean it when they say they want to improve public transport?
What message is given by the politicians when they do this? They want you the citizens and consumers to buy more cars so they can build more highways and bridges for you to drive on. Then they hike the toll rates, hike the fuel prices etc to trap you.
Now when the price hikes are driving the citizens up the wall, they invoke the magic words: ‘Change your lifestyles’! What they say seems not to match the real message of their policies and actions.
Then let's look into what the government does about energy saving. Tenaga Nasional is privatised so it can shamelessly go all out to maximise its profits which must entail promoting its energy sales. So how can energy-saving be achieved when the monopoly energy-provider actually wants to promote energy consumption - or even wastage on a national scale?
Why doesn’t the government allow more companies to generate their own local energy needs eg through solar power, mini-hydros, tidal energies etc? It should be a surprise to citizens that they are prohibited by law to generate their own electricity if the national grid reaches their area.
Why leave the lucrative power-generation market to Tenaga and a few privileged IPP (independent power producers)?
Next, let's look at global warming which derives significantly from the releasing of carbon and other greenhouse gases from society. Power generation and traffic accounts for most of the emission of these gases. We had already seen how the government's policies have not helped. Now let's look at it from another angle - what if you want to move away from high-energy consumption at your home and office - does the government help you to really change your lifestyle?
The common design of the high-rises in this country under the national uniform buildings by-laws does not require builders to pay attention towards maximising natural lighting and ventilation thus making all buildings in this country heat traps and stuffy concrete boxes. High- energy solutions are thus made mandatory - the use of air-conditioners. It is as though the law- makers are salespersons for air-conditioner and energy companies! The indoors are kept cool but the world outside is kept warm, warm enough to melt our polar ice caps.
Maybe you want to change your lifestyles to save the endangered species and the threatened rainforests and mangrove swamps? Look at how much uncontrolled logging and conversion to oil palm plantations is going on in this country. The cooking oil we consume daily is really `cheap' - only that many rainforest species and parts of the ecosystem have been `fried' every day in your frying pans.
Is there any effort to map out our rainforests to maintain our precious ecosystems and bio-diversities? It seems that where you can get profits, there are no environmental considerations that can stop them. It seems that this is part of the lifestyle of corporate and political leaders - to chop down a forest whenever they see one.
The biggest joke must be reserved for the recycling campaigns. They are so well-advertised - enough to deceive the many `media consumers'. Yet our waste recycling rate cannot compare with those of other cities - including those of similar economic standing.
Our dumping grounds are crowding out our cities and other living spaces. Yet the aim is to give the solid waste management of a whole country to a crony company - no matter if they can manage it or not. The profit for these cronies overrides everything else.
The politicians might be wealthy but they lack the `wealth' of ideas to reduce, reuse and recycle waste in this country. They pay for fancy PR campaigns and ads as substitutes for real effort at cutting back the garbage mountains which are built by 1kg/person/day by all citizens.
If we look at what changes of lifestyles we really need to survive the destructive and wasteful lifestyles we live everyday, we are very short of what is demanded of us by Earth. And a big stumbling block for people to change their lifestyles seriously is the contradicting government policies which are inhibiting and discouraging.
Yet they dare to call upon the citizenry to `change life style' - which to them is to simply to tighten our belts - while the corporate and political `leaders' upscale their lifestyles. They should not get away with such blatant lies especially in the wake of World Environment Day which was on June 5.
