Saturday, February 21, 2009

Day 2 of National Sustainability Conference

The day started off with the Ambassador Chew Tai Soo informing the audience of Singapore's official international position on climate change. A reuters reporter present was rather efficient and an article on the morning's speech is already published and picked up by Straits Times by 2pm!

If you were following my twitter updates, you'd have gotten a frenzy of live reporting (140 char at a time!). Hurray for social media *grin* But I must acknowledged my admiration for the traditional media efficiency too! But they were using online medium (posting on ST Online) for the purpose too. Interestingly, I was tipped off by @sgnews on twitter who picks up RSS feed from major news agencies in Singapore.

Below is a compilation of day 2 happenings as updated on twitter.

Ambassador chew tai soo who is the chief negotiator on climate change at copehagen this year is speaking now on singapore's position about 12 hours ago

The chief negotiator states that singapore has negligible impact on climate change, and alt energy disadvantged, can't move away from fossil He considers singapore a small island DEVELOPING state. An alternative energy disadvantaged country. Sigh 'we will contribute what we can' means you can't force them to do what they refuse to acknowledge, much less do One of the ways to offset our emission is apparently to have singapore 'covered in greenery' but gardening is not the same as forests! When asked why we present ourselves as a developing country, he says coz we are member of G77 developing states. 'matter of history' When do we move from 'history' to the present or the future? Where is the progress we speak of in our national pledge? The ambassador seems to hint at the audience in the room that they can't speak of reductions when they sit comf in brightly kit aircon room The gist of singapore's stand it seems is that the world needs to reduce emissions but it's other people's responsibility The director of climate change, mewr highlights clean energy as one of the strategy but what about the potential coal plant in sg? Energy efficiency seems like the key or only strategy in addressing climate change. How disappointing The deputy director of strategic policy appears to be merely reading off the standard pr propaganda. I feel like i'm at an info centre Are the mewr ppl not allowed to present anything apart from official content that i can just read from the website? Wildsingapore poster of semakau is used to highlight the success of the landfill in conserving biodiversity

Dr michael quah is really a good speaker, talking about electronic versus liquid diet. More dimension to alternative energies Dr quah talks about including food in the equation along with water and energy! I can't agree more! 'through internal discussion, they probably tink 6.5 million population is probably sustainable' orly? Upon monkey asking about news of coal power plant in singapore, mewr informed that the plan is off due to financial crisis But coal is still acceptable as a form of 'clean energy' in singapore! *grimace* Reuters is really efficient. Just 4 hours after the ambassador's speech this morn, they alr put up an article & straits times picked it up! Prof wong poh poh is talking about sea level rise in singapore. IPCC predicts a 59cm sea level rise but they didn't consider data after 2005. Since then, theres dramatic increase Singapores coastal areas were reclaimed and raised by 1.25m above the highest recorded tide of 3.9m. Sea level rise must consider tides too! How long term is our planning? IPCC is planning for 300 years. Prof natasha hamilton nicely sum up that sg cc strategy is aimed at making sg look good in the 'fiction of being a developing country' Sg reports that they emit 41522 kilo tonnes of co2 in 2006 but the usa dept of energy reports it as 141,100kilo tonnes 48% of singapore's emissions is from electricity generation. Air transport is one of the controversial footprint that's not addressed.

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