Time to think about the environment!

I am not sure whether it is the third-world mentality, or rather the wrong priority on the wrong issues. As a Malaysian, I am used to reading about weird news on snooping, corruptions, sexy dresses, artiste insulting prophet's wife or racial politics. However, the article from the STar Development puts the heat on cities , manage to make its way to the headline of a mainstream newspaper, is indeed refreshing. It's good to know, sometimes, on the back of our mind, we do think about all these more important issues.

In many countries, New Zealand for example, environmental issues such as nuclear technology or greenhouse gases are major political issues. However, in contrast, our politicians like to talk about racial supremacy, or economics benefits (ala developments in the form of government contracts), or your-typical-bash-the-opposition-islamic-values talk. How and when we, as a nation will grow up and start to think about the environment?

The article itself highlighted three issues that seems to compound the problem of overheated urban cities bolded lines are my opinions
a) concrete building storing heats and releasing it at night
isnt this a good thing?? In reality, the so-called urban heat island phenomena is nothing other than the fact that our urban cities have too much impervious surfaces and too few greens.

b) that brought us t the second issues - lack of green trees.
this can be more true. we do need trees..as in big big trees. not just some fancy low maintenance nipah/palm trees.

c) lastly, the use of roof tiles
I am surprised that the Department of Drainage and Irrigation (why are they involved anyway?), would raise this issue. In contrary to the suggestion of the use of reflective roof, i personally think roof tiles are much better heat absorber. If all houses/buildings adopt the reflective roof tiles, we ll bound to have higher average temperature in cities because all the sunlight is reflected away from the structures.

Honestly, this article only serves the purpose of awareness. It doesn't have much scientific value, nor any concrete suggestion/plan. ANother one-minute-fame news. Too bad for the hutan-hutan beluka (forest).

On the side note, there's an earthquake in SUmatra! I think one day we ll get a big one that hit singapore/malaysia! Source: The star Earthquake!