Wednesday, August 10, 2005

The Haze

Everyone's talking about the haze these days. Even posting pictures of grey nothingness on their blogs. So I thought I'd hop on the bandwagon.
And put up the picture of our hazy, grey skies here.


I mean, it's so bad I can hardly inhale without going into coughing fits. The skies are just so hazy.

(I probably deserve to be beaten up, don't I?)

But seriously. I wonder what crazy-ass ideas some low-IQ but high-volume politician's gonna suggest next. I remember the last time someone suggested implementing the water curtain idea. Spraying a curtain of water down from tall buildings. In hopes of clearing the smog in KL. Yea, right. Talk about trying to take down a whale with a sewing needle. And this, in the midst of a water crisis in Malaysia.

Don't these guys know to actually read up and do some research before they come up with these ideas? And does anyone (probably way before your time) remember when they hired some foreign rain-making company to help make it rain in Malacca? I think that was in the 80's. Except it wasn't cloud seeding, but using weird looking conical/cuboid/spherical object on the ground, pointing up to the sky. Something to do with the ions/chi/The Force. Worked so well that these foreigners were laughing their way to the bank. Naturally, it didn't rain. (Results may differ, stated the fine print)

Sounds like things are pretty bad right now. So, what can we do about it? Besides the obvious, like banning open burning (which our lazy authorities never enforce until it's too late anyway), if they're serious enough about it, perhaps a short-term solution would be to declare an emergency holiday and to limit vehicles only to public transportation and emergency services. Sounds harsh, but I bet having few cars on the roads for even a day would make some difference. Also, I'm not even sure if we have hybrid vehicles in Malaysia (any readers can enlighten me?). Perhaps it's high time the government promote these vehicles by providing a subsidy or tax return for owners of hybrids.

Oh wait. I forgot, "We have to protect the local carmaking industry..."

Malaysia memang boleh.