Article 6: Still carrying plastic bags? (Social)

It’s hip to be green but is there a line between being genuinely concerned about the planet and being an eco poseur?
IT’S been cloudy and raining the past week and I love weather like this.
My bed’s next to a window which I keep open, and I love it when lightning and thunder wake me up at night.
I love the sound of the rain. I love it when the downpour gets so heavy that sheets of it slant past my blinds and raindrops start splattering against my face. I love the mossy smell of dampness seeping up from the ground during a storm, and I love digging deeper under my blanket and going back to sleep. This wet weather is weird for July, but then the world’s weather has gone all screwy.
Floods in summertime Britain and China but heatwaves in Romania, Austria and Bulgaria. Mother Nature has become one capricious old lady.
The most common explanation for all this is global warming. Temperatures around the world are rising because cars, factories, power plants and the like are emitting a lot of carbon dioxide, trapping heat in the atmosphere.
Global warming is said to be the villain behind weather woes from droughts to floods, wildfires to melting glaciers. Some even say it caused 2005’s Hurricane Katrina in the United States.
The thing is, a lot of what constitutes global warming – as well as the green movement itself – continues to baffle me.
Oh, I’ve watched Al Gore’s 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth. He did a good job of explaining global warming. He was also convincing in putting across the message that much of it is caused by humans and that we’ll be in big trouble if we don’t stem the emission of carbon dioxide.
It’s not a view that everyone accepts, but the problem with the green movement for neutral observers like me is how vicious and personal debates always degenerate to.
Green advocates and sceptics alike are so zealous in their views – just read the Internet forums – that they put off more open-minded folk like me who want to find out more about the issues, which are often complex. (Do you really understand how carbon offsets work?)
As I gather, one hot topic right now is whether buying eco-friendly products actually reduces global warming, or is it something one does just to appear “cool”. With celebrities lending their names to the green cause and companies rolling out stylish, expensive earth-friendly products from clothes to bedsheets, has the focus moved from saving the planet to making a fashion statement? There’s a term for people who indulge in this – eco poseurs. The urban dictionary on the Internet defines this as one who “buys all the eco-friendly non-toxic household products, organic local growns, hybrids and other gree’ery’.
“They really do not ‘do’ anything to help our earth, they just purchase
over-priced stuff from companies that try to help. So they wear the hemp and eat the organic, but do they actually take time out of their cell phone lives to give a helping hand?”

TAKE the much-hyped Anya Hindmarch I’m Not A Plastic Bag bag.
The British accessories designer is most famous for her Be a Bag project where customers can get their photographs printed onto her bags. (I’ve got one with my niece’s face on it).
Earlier this year, she worked with a British non-profit organisation to design an affordable, environmentally friendly bag that people could use in lieu of evil plastic bags.
Made of unbleached cotton and sold for £5 (S$15), the bags with the cute logo were snapped up in Britain. Women lined up from 2am to buy them and celebrities were spotted carrying them.
When the bags came to Asia, fights broke out in Hong Kong as women rushed for them.
In Singapore, there were more people on the waiting lists than the number of bags alloted. They are now sold on eBay for many times their price. Fakes have appeared in China.
Kudos to Hindmarch for her contribution to the cause, but what can one say about the consumers? How much of the rush for the bag was because of a genuine desire to use it in place of plastic bags, and how much merely coveting the latest trendy must-have and to be one up on your neighbour because you have the bag and she doesn’t?
You see the same green chic bandwagon mentality in fashion.
The in thing now is for designers to have “eco” lines that boast raw materials – natural silk organza, organic wool – and “ethical” production and manufacturing processes.
All well and good, but their price tags are laughable – $700 silk dresses, $2,000 clutch bags with wooden beads, $5,000 blazers made of cork. Is this what being green is about? Shopping choices, and expensive ones at that?
I’d always thought that the starting point of the green movement was consuming less rather than more. Then again, who am I to sneer at the green chic chick for being insincere?
If Anya Hindmarch’s I’m Not A Plastic Bag bag was dangled before me, I’d grab it too and, yes, because it is trendy and cute. It’s the same reason one of my favourite T-shirts features a huge recycling logo. It’s a cool cause to be associated with right now.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if you’re latching on to the eco cause just because it’s the fashionable thing to do so. It’s better than not being bothered at all. In any case, taking small steps is the only way that we, digits on the planet, can help.
While politicians and big businesses slug it out over the causes and effects of global warming, it’s actually quite simple on the personal level to do your part to bring down global warming. According to Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth website, it’s as easy as this:
Replacing a regular lightbulb with a compact flourescent one; driving less; recycling more; checking that your tyres are properly inflated to improve gas mileage; using less hot water; avoiding products with lots of packaging to cut down on garbage; adjusting your thermostat; planting a tree; turning off electronic devices when not using them.
I’m late in the game, but I’m trying.
The other day, I surprised myself when I was buying doughnuts. The cashier was putting the plastic bag of doughnuts into another plastic bag when I told her I didn’t need it – the doughtnuts could easily fit into another (plastic) bag I was already carrying.
It was no big deal of course, but I did feel virtuous and smug.
And my most important contribution of all to alleviate global warming? I never sleep with the air-conditioner on. I get ventilation from an open window.
Which, of course, is also perfect when it rains in the early hours of the morning, as has been happening.

My reflections:
Have people been too obsess in “going green”? Have we been “going green” just because it is the “hip” thing to do? Well, the author of this article certainly feels so.
She realized that “green” items, which are items that are made of natural materials to cut down on the use of plastics or items to help one cut down on waste, are becoming ridiculously expensive. For example, it costs $2000 for a clutch bag with wooden beads. To the author, people nowadays starts going green because they realize that their friends are starting to eat organic food, carrying recycled material bags. How many people actually are willing to spend money to have the desire to save Earth and not to keep up with the fashion?
Although the author thinks that it is not very good to spend so much to go green only to want to keep up with the fashion, it is better than those who are not doing anything. She believes that rather than spending so much, it might be better to actually return to the conventional of saving Earth, in other words, stop wasting electricity, increasing gas mileage, cut down on items with a lot of packaging.
This is important to those who are constantly spending money to keep with the fashion of going green. It will allow them to reflect on the real need of spending so much and finding out that they can actually possibly help Earth more through practical and costless efforts. To the designers of those ridiculous expensive items, they should also reflect on the real intention of making such an expensive item, is it really to save Earth, or to fill one’s own pocket?
To the general public, this is not too big a problem. If one does not have the means to spend so much on purchasing “green” items, all they can do is to be responsible in their homes and try as best to help reduce the amount of damage on Earth. For those who have got more money, it would be great if they are still willing to spend the money to save Earth and at the same time not neglect the things they can continue to do at home. To the environmentalists, this is a win-win situation as no matter if people spend or do not spend money, they will be informed and hopefully learn to save the Earth they live in.
I personally am not obsessed with going green but I try as best to do my part. I try to turn off lights in the room when there is no one in, or cut down on the amount of air-conditioning I use. However, I do know that there is a limit to how much I can do, so I hope that anyone that reads my blog can learn from the author. It might be difficult but after some time, it would become one’s second nature and it would feel much easier to save Earth.
(499 words)

Article 5: Shipping feels the heat over dirty fuel fumes (Environment)

Rapped over global warming, industry wrestles with ways to lower emissions. [SINGAPORE] The shipping industry is starting to sweat over global warming after it was revealed recently that it is guilty of producing twice as much harmful emissions as the aviation sector.Global shipping accounts for 5-7 per cent of total global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and 15-30 per cent of all nitrogen oxide (NOx) being belched into the atmosphere. This, when fuel usage in shipping is only about 2-4 per cent of world fossil fuels.The culprit is the quality of “dirty” bunker fuel used by vessels.Two recent studies, one by oil major BP and another by the European Union (EU),suggest shipping emissions could rise by as much as 75 per cent in the next 20 years as world trade growth demands more shipping services. Currently, shipping carries 90 per cent of global trade.A third study by the DP Group estimated that the shipping industry will emit at least 1.2 billion tonnes of CO2 every year by 2011, eclipsing the declining emissions of the aviation industry which currently emits 600 million tonnes of CO2 per year.But this must be put into perspective, argues the managing director of the Hong Kong Shipowners’ Association, Arthur Bowring. “Sea cargo is a necessity, air cargo is a luxury,” he told BT in a phone interview.“Without shipping, half the world would starve, half would freeze and the rest would both starve and freeze,” he said.Mr Bowring’s organisation became an unlikely environmental champion two years ago, when it proposed a one per cent global sulphur emission cap. The issue now is how to lower the emissions, how soon and what is a reasonable level.Historically, according to Mr Bowring, the industry is “dragged kicking and screaming into the regulatory arena and then reluctantly changes its practices”.But this time around it appears to be different, partly because it wasabundantly clear that the first steps to regulate the industry’s emissions by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) were already woefully out of date by the time they came into effect last year and this year.These moves placed a 4.5 per cent global cap on the amount of sulphur in a ship’s fuel and special SOx (sulphur oxide) Emission Control Areas (Seca) where the cap was only 1.5 per cent.The Baltic Sea Seca became operational in May this year and the second – North Sea and English Channel – will come into effect this November.But to put these levels into perspective, the EU, for instance, limits the sulphur content in automotive fuel to 15 parts per million, or 0.0015 per cent.Also the global average for sulphur content in bunker fuel is only 2.8 per cent.The problem is that the fuel used by ships is essentially the leftovers from the crude oil-refining process after gasoline and the distillate fuel oils like diesel are extracted. This leftover is known as “residual fuel”.It was largely seen as a win-win situation until recently, because shipowners get cheaper fuel and the oil majors get rid of their rubbish.Current residual bunker fuel – of which nearly 200 million tonnes is used each year – is the dirtiest fuel in use and emits high levels of not just SOx and NOx, but also volatile organic compounds and particulate matter – all harmful to both human health and the environment.“We burn crap in our ships,” acknowledges Mr Bowring who describes the residual fuel as being “only one step up from the asphalt you put on roads”. While a number of proposals have been tossed into the ring, they basically revolve around two broad camps. Continuing to use residual fuel but lowering the sulphur content either duringrefining or on board the ship using scrubbers and other technology; orswitching completely away from residual to cleaner distillate fuel like diesel.But vested interests at every turn have made this a complicated debate.What will become of the “leftovers” now used as bunker fuel? Are shipowners willing to pay higher fuel costs associated with distillate fuel, now almost double that of residual fuel?Studies have suggested, however, that if the entire shipping industry switched over to distillate fuel, the cost would only be 15-25 per cent more than current residual fuel costs. Still, are consumers prepared to pay more? “The bunker fuel supply industry has many stakeholders who do not view emissions regulations the same way,” according to Douglas Raitt, global FOBAS manager at Lloyd’s Register.The refining industry has estimated that US$130 billion would need to be invested to facilitate a switch to distillate fuel.The refiners have also suggested this switch could result in the creation of an extra 120 million tonnes of CO2.“In effect, this would suggest that we would be decreasing sulphur emissions at the expense of increasing greenhouse gasses,” said Mr Raitt. “If true, is that a solution we want to support?” But he is nonetheless encouraged by the debate which is slowly moving towards a consensus.As a major refining hub, shipping and bunkering port and the sixth-largest shipping registry in the world, Singapore has much at stake in this debate. The Maritime & Port Authority of Singapore is part of an IMO study group formed to complete, “on an urgent basis, a comprehensive and in-depth assessment of each proposal”, it said in response to BT queries.

My reflections:
What is global warming caused by? Yes, the emissions of harmful gases such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide into the atmosphere, destroying the ozone layer. In this article, it can be seen that actually about 6% of the carbon dioxide and 16% of nitrogen oxide that destroys the atmosphere is actually produced by global shipping.
Global shipping is a huge business which delivers goods around the world. As said by Hong Kong Shipowners’ Association, Arthur Bowring, global shipping cannot be stopped as if it is, “half the world would freeze, half the world would starve, and the rest will both freeze and starve.” This shows how important global shipping is to the global village now.
As one would be wondering, what is the real root of the problem? The real reason why global shipping can produce so much harmful gases is due to the usage of bunker oil. Bunker oil, is the waste after refining oil, a type of oil that is of even lower quality than diesel. This oil emits high levels of harmful gases and is at the same time harmful to organic materials. This is however still in used because oil-refineries considers it as waste and shipping companies can buy is at very cheap prices. This is an important matter as if this type of oil continues being used by ships, the atmosphere would be continuously filled with harmful gases.
In the articles, two solutions were given, first to persuade shipping companies to change to using cleaner distillated oil, or secondly using technology to decrease the amount of harmful gases produced by the residual fuel.
This fact can be used by scientist to find a way to deal with this “waste oil” and at the same time find ways to refine oil in a cheaper way. In this way, shipping companies would not be reluctant in changing to using diesel. Also, it would be useful if people can come up with easy technologies to cut down on the amount of harmful gases released.
From the point of shipping companies, changing the type of oil used would require a certain sum of money and it would be inconvenient. Being businessmen, it is possible that they care for their profits more than the environment. To the environmentalists and the general public, it would be great if the amount of harmful gases can be cut down as this would greatly help in the health and climate problems.
Although it can understood that it would be troublesome for all shipping companies to change to cleaner fuel, they should take into account the amount of damage they are causing the Earth to suffer. Being people living on Earth, if we do not take care of our planet, who else would? From the point of the public, we would greatly appreciate if there is an effort to reduce global warming. Despite being just one out of six billion people, we should do our best to save Earth.
(495 words)