Lee Keng Hwa
(A0112509N), Group A03
In Goldin’s TED talk (2009), he mentions that
climate change is one of the factors that had resulted from rapid
globalization. Climate change is the result of global warming that is caused by
greenhouse gases (GHGs), which are emitted from the human activities that are used
to build the modern lives. The majority of these GHGs were emitted from the
buildings around us and the fossil fuels used in transportation, industries and
electricity generators. These GHGs have the ability to trap heat around the
atmosphere, which has induced the glaciers in the North and South Poles to melt
and sea levels to rise. As Singapore is a small and low-lying island that is surrounded
by the sea, the rise in sea level will have major effects on Singapore. According
to National Climate Change Secretariat (NCCS) (2012), there has been an average
increase of 3mm of sea level per year over the past 15 years. While the Singapore
government is encouraging the reduction of the emission of GHGs to reduce
global warming by settling up some policies within the transportation and
building sectors, there are still a number of people who refuse to follow the
policies.
Singapore government has been focusing on
reducing the emission of GHGs from the transportation throughout the years.
According to the data of Singapore’s GHGs Emissions from NCCS (n.d.), there are
about 19% of CO2 emissions were contributed from transport in year
2005. In order to reduce the emission of CO2, LTA had set up some
policies to encourage people to take public transport. First of all, LTA has
been manages the vehicle usage and traffic congestion by implementing the
Certificate of Entitlement (COE) and Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) to
discourage people from purchase a car. LTA also has been improve and promote the
public transport in order to make the public transport be the first choice of
mode of transport for every people. Through these solutions, LTA had reduced
the CO2 emission from the fossil fuels in transportation in an
indirect way and the NCCS is expecting to reduce the CO2 to 14.5% by
2020. Although the Singapore government manages to reduce the CO2 by
providing an efficient transport system, there are still a number of people who
refuse to use the public transport due to the reason of overcrowd on the MRT
during peak hours. In my opinion, LTA can try to shorten the current waiting
time of the train from about average 2miniutes to 30 seconds by increasing the
frequency of the train during peak hours. On the other hand, LTA can also
collaborate with MOM and MOE to reduce the crowd of peak hours by rearranging
the school and work release time to spread the peak hours more evenly. In short, the Singapore government was made
public transport as one of the mode of transport for every Singaporean to
reduce the CO2 emission by the fossil fuels in transportations. Every
Singaporean should appreciate what had the government did and follow the footsteps
of the government to protect the environment.
Other than focusing on cutting down the
emission of GHGs from transportation, the Singapore government also has been
focusing on reducing the emission of GHGs from buildings. Based on the data
from NCCS (n.d.), the building sector emitted about 16% of CO2 in
2005. To reduce GHGs emission from the buildings, the Building and Construction
Authority (BCA) implemented the BCA Green Mark Scheme in 2005 to raise the
awareness of sustainability as well as to encourage building developers to
develop more environmentally-friendly buildings in Singapore. The Ministry of
National Development (MND) provided 20 million dollars for this Green Mark,
while BCA also provided some new grants to attract the developers to build or
upgrade more green buildings. Other than that incentive, the National
Environment Agency (NEA) launched the Energy Efficiency National Partnership
(EENP) programme to encourage the private sectors to maximize the building energy
efficiency to reduce the carbon emissions. With these policies, the NCCS is expecting
to cut down the CO2 emission from 16% in 2005 to 13.8% in 2020.
Through these effective policies, NCCS should be able to achieve their goals by
2020, but from my point of view, the government could improve their policies by
providing extra cash incentives as a motivation for the designers to produce
new creative ideas in their designs.
In conclusion, the global warming issue is
getting more serious and it will have major effects on Singapore. Throughout
the years, Singapore government had set up many policies to reduce the carbon
emissions from the transportation and building sectors. Thus, this is the time
for every Singaporean to work with the government to protect our environment by
taking a few small steps toward energy conservation. In this way, we could have
an immeasurable effect!
797 words
References:
Building
and Construction Authority,
(n.d.). Code on
environmental sustainability measures for existing buildings 1st edition. Retrieved March 8, 2014, from
Goldin, I. (2009). Navigating our global
future. Retrieved from
National
Climate Change
Secretariat, (2012). Impact of climate change
on Singapore, Retrieved March 8, 2014, from
National
Climate Change Secretariat,
(2012). Projecting
Singapore’s greenhouse gas emissions, Retrieved March 1, 2014, from
National
Climate Change Secretariat,
(2012). Sectoral measures to
reduce emission (up to 2020). Retrieved March 8, 2014, from
National
Climate Change Secretariat, (n.d.). Singapore’s national climate change strategy_chapter 3:
mitigation of greenhouse gas emission,
Retrieved March 8, 2014, from
National
Geographic Society, (1996-2014). Global warming solutions,
Retrieved March 1, 2014, from
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