There's one good thing to come out of the International New York Times conference on energy (so far) today: unlike Australian prime minister Tony Abbott gutlessly and shamefully categorizing climate change and economic growth as mutually exclusive at the G20 meeting in Brisbane last weekend, Malaysia's prime minister Najib Razak did no such thing.
Abbott point-blank didn't want to talk about climate change in the same breath as economic growth. He probably thinks that because Australia is a first-world country, that its economy is considered 'advanced' along OECD lines, there is therefore no need to also talk about his country's development needs in the same breath as economic growth.
Obviously Abbott either doesn't know his country all too well or doesn't want to know what problems more and more Australians face everyday. As long as Team Australia keeps the filthy rich and nouveau riche "baby boomers" in Club Liberal and National parties h! appy, all's hunky-dory Down Under.
Saviour Najib. All hail the king!
At least Najib didn't do that. At least Najib said that the environment need not come at the cost of economic growth and development, that the economy and the environment could thrive together, like lovers (or partners in crime).
But that's about it. Sure, he said that this meeting was an opportune time to discuss "new development models". He also said: "We can show other developing countries that economic growth and carbon emissions need not be correlated. And we can help bridge the trust gap between 'developed' and 'developing' countries at the UN climate change negotiations." That's in Paris in 2015.
Well, that's all very big of him. And that's probably because Malaysia, he keeps saying, is on the verge of transforming (there's that word again) into "a high-income nation".
That's all swell. But these boasts, this stro! king of the self-ego, don't amount to half-truths, still les! s truth by any stretch of the imagination.
They're just drivel. Worse than drivel, they're hype and hubris of the immature kind.
Spin, spin, spin
Najib said he was appalled by the recent floods in Cameron highlands. No kidding!
They were more than floods; it was yet another episode in landsliding. TV3, Umno's bells-and-whistles mouthpiece, will do well to do a documentary series called Landslide Malaysia. It'd be a hit among Malaysians and the world who will no doubt see Najib with a gobsmacked look on his face, as if this sort of thing in Cameron Highlands was the first time it had happened.
Same with floods. But he'd even claim he has never seen tropical torrential downpours in his country. Nor would Najib have heard Umno-BN cronies plundering ancestral lands of Indigenous Malaysians, with state-donated multibillion dollars for his cronies to build high-powered hydroelectric dams while hanging the tribal peoples out to dry.
Of course Najib would not have heard! of corruption in Malaysia, either. Kazakhstan, yes; Malaysia – no. Because Malaysia is not Kazakhstan. There's no manic corruption in Malaysia between local district officials, state officials, federal bureaucrats, ministers and private developers who rip out whole hills overnight, leaving people who live at the foothills vulnerable to landslides and being buried alive. But what do their lives matter?
The alam (environment) in Malaysia is as pristine as its 'government', its government-linked corporations (Malays, Chinese, Indian), its bureaucracy and the police (also Najib's cronies and protectors). It is so pristine that when one wakes up in Kuala Lumpur every morning – "a modern, vibrant city, at the heart of one of the world's most dynamic regions" – everything's peaches.
The air one breathes at 7am is pristine. No rats and cockroaches scurrying for cover as daylight exposes their conniving filth. Not a whiff of carbon monoxide. The ba! lance of oxygen and carbon dioxide is as close to perfect as p! erfection can get.
That's why Malaysian trees, bushes and kangkung flourish endlessly in the land of endless possibilities, where everything – and I mean e-ve-ry-thing – is so, so green in Malaysia. So green that you would literally want to get down on your hands and knees and kiss the ground, the tanah air.
That would explain why Najib is hell-bent on reducing carbon emissions some more, after already having cut CO2 emissions from the country's gross domestic product by – wait for it – 33%!
But from what – 100% emissions?
The average of the last five years of emission, according to my calculations from World Bank data on CO2 emissions (tons per capita) is 7.3. In comparative terms, that's a pretty good number, given Malaysia's population.
But is it a believable number? When the haze from neighboring Indonesia isn't choking the lives out of Kuala Lumpur, smog is – the smog of factories with high-tech anti-pollution chimneys and motor vehicles whose emissions are negligible compared to say downtown Los Angeles or Mexico City or New Delhi or Bangkok or Beijing.
Don't forget the cow dung, though, which has fuel-burning chemical properties. Livestock alone emit some 20% of all greenhouse gases in the world. These gases cause global warming, more than all other forms of modern transport vehicles. Perhaps assign Shahrizat Abdul Jalil and Family to manage this problem, after their splendid business acumen in running the National Feedlot Corporation.
Now here's the good news. By 2050 livestock numbers will have to at least double to meet future global demand for meat. Here's the other good news: Najib has never heard of Lynas, whose rare-earth operations were bulldozed into place, thumbing the noses of anti-Lynas locals and environmentalists who were armed with scientific evidence of cancer-causing rare-earth contamination.
Putting profits ahead of human lives is always a solid, indisputable moral cause on par with godliness.
Rise, KL Model. I knight thee.
But, hell: I keep coming back to KL, to Najib's idea that KL offers a model for balancing economic growth and development and the environment.
On the weekend I peered into the Klang River from the overhead bridge. Has anybody else noticed how pristine it is or was it just me? What about the Gombak River? And the river that dissects Malacca (on another trip to look for Hang Tuah)? And would you swim in Batu Ferringhi or Tanjong Bunggah?
All right then: Have you walked down Jalan Sultan in Chinatown, day or night, and wondered what you may have just stepped on? Or Kota Raya? Central Market, perhaps?
Tell me that the environment (alam) around these places is so pristine that they exhibit every bit of balance between economic growth and brilliant environmental consciousness that can be extrapolated and amplified across Malaysia and be held up as Model Malaysia for the world to come to Kuala Lumpur and take vital notes for their own salvation while Najib gloats and gloats.
I suppose Najib hasn't seen the haze strangling the life out of Malaysians. Or blames the Indonesians for exporting the haze even when it isn't haze season. He wouldn't have seen Kuala Lumpur jammed with cars and bikes and trucks and buses and trains chugging carbon monoxide into the atmosphere. I wonder if he has wondered if there are more vehicles on KL's streets and roads and back lanes and sidewalks in 2014 than there were in 2009, or what the CO2 level in 2014 is compared to 2009 – five years ago when CO2 emission (tons per capita) was already 7.3 for Malaysia.
What a wonderful cerita (story) Najib told the conference delegates today. They must all be blind sycophants. Or Najib's biggest fans. (He wishes.) – November 19, 2014.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.
Source : http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/sideviews/article/najibs-kuala-lumpur-model-for-staving-off-climate-disaster-rip-van-winkle
