the butterfly effect

i can't watch the episode of Planet Earth where the exhausted polar bear swim to find food. i feel sick.

while we are still deeply stuck into our insular debates about supermarket plastic bags, emission limits and green auto performance, a polar bear can't make the next ice ledge.

don't they say the flap of a butterfly's wings can cause a typhoon halfway around the world? its done more than flap this time, it's flown to exeter and taught scientists how to make better flat screen TVs.

(from Daily Mail)
there's no doubt people in Singapore and much of the world enjoy great privileges. arguably in our privileged minds, we have the excess idle capacity to ponder global warming, animal rights and our own excesses with time enough to watch Simon Cowell get emotional over african children on Idol Gives Back. all as the rest of the world struggle to see the next day. also because of that, many of us have seen the egocentric glitter dreams from the enterprise culture of our youth as what they are: hollow, hungry and deadly.

and now a billion chinese people want it. are you scared? i am petrified. they and other developing countries make a case against resisting green policies because so many of their people are deep in poverty. and then you read about indigenous people uprooted, overrun or infected by the need for currency, coal, oil and whatever. so these people get displaced and they argue we have no choice but to enlarge our chug chugging economic system so that we can feed these helpless people into it.

so why do we care about the environment and polar bears when there are so many hungry mouths to feed? because somewhere along the lines someone will put their finger on a humane socio-economic system that works so that people set back on their feet have an alternative to glass towers and non-detachable cell phones and the ones who choose to join the system will not go on to sell fake milk powder and spiked animal and fish feed with useless chemicals in the name of profit. because their dreams will be different. better.