Sustainability.

I would never call myself a green activist because truth be told, technology and caring for the environment do not make the best company. David Owen, an author advocates living smaller, living closer and driving less are the keys to sustainability. For the last three decades at least, the world's take on lifestyle has changed drastically. No more are we fond believers going local, we have gone regional and global. As much as I love traveling and I believe that it has an outstanding impact on culture and the economy, but air travel is definitely not good for the environment. One of the biggest joke about being green is Paul McCartney's Lexus Hybrid LS600H which was flown in from Japan instead of being shipped. If they had shipped it, the carbon footprint would have been 100 times smaller. Who cares anymore if the car is energy efficient? It would have to write off these losses before even being able to be green. Then the truth of any nature would be that as long as parts of the car had to be imported rather than locally produced, the car in itself would also be not as green as it should be.

I've been pondering about the green thing for quite a while now. I know that globalisation makes production cost lower. I think it also increases carbon footprint, and it also puts the local skilled workers out of a job. It's a tough call which is more important to an organisation. I would naturally think that profit margins are what gives people a bigger pay or bonus. It increases their spending expenditure and in that oxymoronic kind of way, stimulates the economy. However, we are also very slowly killing ourselves. Is there really a balance in life? If life were a balance sheet or we were doing the T bar accounting of our lives, we will realise that there is no such thing as an "all gain" sort of scenario. So many things we gain in terms of quantity, we have already made our losses in terms of quality. So maybe the good, cheap and fast/efficient triangle does stand. You can have something good and cheap but not fast/efficient, or fast/efficient and cheap but not good but what is good and fast/efficient is definitely not cheap. Question is whether are we able to live without some things we now consider a luxury or necessity (like air-conditioning) and take a few steps backwards to save the environment? Earth day is coming up. I reckon that instead of just turning off your lights for an hour, why not turn off your air-conditioning for the night? And please do not light a candle during the blackout. It pollutes our environment as well.