Need to slow down rate of consumption to attain sustainable development
time. We mortals, past and present, waste more
than what we need and we will fight or bully the
weak, to steal what we do not own. Might is Right?
You can only have your way when you are
powerful. Examples of such power could be the
so-called great empires of the past, like the British
Empire wherein, at its prime, the “sun never
sets”, only controlled by a “thin-red-line”, which
was backed up by their much feared “gun-boat
diplomacy”. To Whitehall, peoples in the colonies
were only useful when they could be organised
and harnessed to exploit the resources and wealth
of the lands they conquered and ruled. Merit order
ranking of priorities was for Britain, first and last,
because they controlled the politics by way of
“Advisors” to the local rulers. That is a classic case
of the “3P’s” that did not help in checking pollution
in the pre-independent Malaya. Ditto other
nations, which are ex-colonies or underdeveloped
nations.
Independent Malaya and later Malaysia,
like many a newly independent state or young
nation, focused on development that would
result in wealth creation and poverty eradication
— the cost of environmental degradation be
damned! After all, our former colonial master,
Great Britain, was not much better vis-à-vis
management of its domestic environmental and
pollution problems.
A post-graduate trainee attached to the Brush
Electrical Works for a year in the UK (1965/1966)
noted that Britain had to contend with smog
(described as “dirty air that looks like a mixture
of smoke and fog caused by smoke from cars and
factories”), acid rain and dead lakes (all the way
to the Scandinavian countries), black and smoked
public buildings in London and elsewhere, built
with marble and other types of stones and a dead
River Thames. Post World War II (WWII), prosperity
returned and efforts were taken to clean up and
today, things have improved.
Other Western European countries followed
suit. In fact, there was started in Europe (less
East Europe, then under the control of USSR)
the Green Movement, which influenced the UN
to establish the Brundtland Commission. The
Commission produced the famous report titled
“Our Common Future” that was the catalyst for
launching the 1992 Rio Summit (also known as
the Earth Summit). In due course, Japan and other
non-Western countries graduated to be members
of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD) where each country’s
national policy includes a green agenda.
51