Who gains under the umbrella of change?

by Yeoh Siew Hoon

Got a note from a friend who was in Rio de Janeiro last week. “Went to the beach. BIG storm. Climate change is upon us.”

In Delhi, they were blaming the “haze” in the sky on various ills – dust from Rajasthan, too many cars – they have more cars in Delhi than Bangalore, Mumbai and Calcutta combined, proud Delhi-ites tell me – while some say it’s just the winter fog.

In Canada and the US north-east, snowstorms are blanketing cities. In the eastern coast of Malaysia, they’re seeing more floods than they’ve ever seen with the weathermen predicting more to come.

In Singapore, it’s been raining incessantly. This is more than raining cats and dogs, this is elephants and rhinoceroses.

And it’s not your tropical bursts where you get a sudden bucketload and it stops; it’s the drip-drip-drip type that just hangs around and dumps on you whenever you feel an urge to go out.

Is climate change upon us or is this just seasonal weather patterns?

On Orchard Road, the Christmas lights are still ablaze and everyone’s desperately trying to celebrate Christmas In The Tropics. I’ve never seen so many wet rats scurrying around the malls and shopping like there’s no tomorrow.

Across in Bali, thousands of climate change experts obviously feel like there is a tomorrow because they sure took a long time – spending a lot of money and generating even more carbon emissions – to decide on really, nothing.

Okay, the more optimistic media (the ST here is also called the Sunshine Times) called it a breakthrough – the Americans finally relented and signed on the dotted line at the 11th hour after being told by Papua New Guinea “If for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us”.

Let’s hear it for the PNG negotiator, Kevin Conrad.

But what they did really sign? Well, reading between the lines, the agreement is long on generalities and short on specifics.

The IHT, in an article “At climate conference, progress in name only” queried, “Will the world’s biggest polluters, the United States and China, accept caps – or limits – on their emission, as countries in Europe have already done?

How will rich nations pay the cost of reducing emissions in the developing world? If there are emission caps, who will face the tightest restrictions – industrialised countries, which now create the most pollution per person, or developing nations, which will soon lead in total emissions?”

I heard pretty much the same questions during the filming of the CNN Future Summit: Saving Planet Earth debate, for which there were no answers.

Who’s going to pay? I suspect that while they continue to argue about that, we will all pay in one way or another.

But the question I want to ask is, who stands to make the most money from what will surely emerge a new industry?

Already, a conservationist friend tells me he’s been buying up tracts of forests while another is investing in wind energy.

On the website, Solar Impulse, the challenge is described as, “In a world depending on fossil energies, the Solar Impulse project is a paradox, almost a provocation: it aims to have an airplane take off and fly autonomously, day and night, propelled uniquely by solar energy, right round the world without fuel or pollution.”

Unfortunately, it can only take one person – the pilot – so I will have to wait for my turn, along with everyone else in the audience who, when asked if they’d like to fly in Solar Impulse, raised their hands.

Piccard is described as an adventurer-pyschiatrist – I can just imagine the conversations he has with himself – “why do you do crazy things like fly around the world in a hot air balloon?“

“Because my mother didn’t give me any balloons when I was growing up.“

He believes that if we thought of climate change as a business opportunity and not a threat to our lifestyles, we’d embrace it more willingly and take action.

Well, about the only business opportunity I can think of right now related to the weather is a bet I have taken with a friend – she says that, according to Chinese belief, if it rains on December 22 (the first day of the winter solstice), it will rain on the first day of the Lunar New Year (which will be February 7, 2008).

She says it has been proven over thousands of years. I didn’t want to get into a debate over it. But I do have $100 riding on it not coming true this year.

Then I will blame it on climate change.

Catch more of Yeoh Siew Hoon every week at The Transit Cafe