Haze woes
Singapore appears to be blanketed in haze today. It hangs low over the air like a malignant mist and it's smell permeates everything, even worming its way into my house (til I closed all the windows and turned on the aircon, anyway). The National Environment Agency website confirm my suspicions- the air quality here is at 'unhealthy levels' and the PSI reading actually went up to 130 at 10 am this morning. It's 1997 all over again.
Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, spoke out on the need for ASEAN to set up a haze fund, citing the fact that Indonesia lacks needed resources, and the costliness of the kind of tools that would be needed to put out large-scale forest fires. Beyond dealing with the fires as they occur, something really needs to be done about their (human) root causes as well (granted, some of the fires probably start by themselves, but I'm guessing not all- or even most).
I really hope that the governments of this region won't just forget all about the haze situation, and the out of control forest fires in Indonesia that cause it, as soon as the air quality clears up; else we can look forward to reliving this year after year for the forseeable future. Though given their track record to date, perhaps I should just invest in a filter mask.
3 comments:
oh ! doesnt sounds too good ! lol.. im going there for my vacation in a couple of days ! hehe
Well, it's perfectly sunny today! PSI's below 50, too- quite a safe level. Hopefully it stays that way over the next week.
whew. sounds a bit better then.
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