TWC Week 08

I remembered in primary school I learned that fossil fuels oil are our main soures of energy. I also remembered it being under the column of "non-renewable resources". The first question that popped up in my young mind (12 year old?) was, "How're we going to have enough energy of the future?" To be honest, I have the most vivid and active imagination. The thought of running out of energy set chains of images in my mind on 101 ways human beings can be wiped out. That was then.


Today, we have various forms of methods to produce renewable energy. I cannot stop puzzling over why the European union is always most active in environmentally friendly matters while Asian countries and America remain passive and continue to place emphasis in traditional methods of wealth generation. The key to it is perhaps monetary incentives. I think that people have the tendency to be more "green" when there is actually an obvious benefit to them. Moreover, it is human's nature to not care about something until the problem comes face-to-face with them, It really is a matter of mob instinct. When large amount of people are actually taking initiative, others tend to follow. No one is willing to follow suit unless others are actually doing it. It may never ever matter that a tiny fry like me urge the governments in Asia to take initiative and start developing research on renewable energy, but they should! Look around South east Asia and the potential untapped energy. Mainly, most of Asean countries are tropical, sunny countries. Think about the amount of solar energy! For once we can actually derive something useful outof the hateful, blaring sun(biased opinion here).


I still maintain that what is stopping Singapore from tapping on renewable energy is the government. Society is like a fountain and the authorities are at the head of the fountain. Once the head of the fountain is polluted, so is the rest of the fountain. Taxation on energy is one of the many core revnenues of government. I am not so sure our government is ready to encourage everyone of us installing solar panels on our roofs(especially HDBs) until there is a sure way to tax it.