‘Enough is enough, we need to speak up’, says S'pore climate rally organiser

The climate change movement around the world is being spearheaded by youths, such as 16-year-old Swede Greta Thunberg. Singapore has its very own young climate champions too, including those who spoke at the inaugural Singapore Climate Rally earlier this month. TODAY speaks to three of them on how they are spreading the message on climate change. Read the other profiles here and here.

SINGAPORE — With an air of quiet confidence, 19-year-old Komal Lad strode up to the stage at Hong Lim Park and delivered the opening speech for the recent Singapore Climate Rally, where she spoke about the urgency of the climate crisis.

Standing poised in front of close to 2,000 attendees, the environmental studies student told the crowd that individual actions were not enough, and that she did not want those younger than her to believe they could protect the Earth just by “increasing the aircon temperature from 19°C to 25°C”.

She had the flair of a seasoned public speaker, but the second-year National University of Singapore (NUS) undergraduate confided that she was, in reality, a bag of nerves.

As a quiet person, she said it took her “a lot of courage” to take the stage, and even recalled shaking when she rehearsed her speech in front of a much smaller group.

“I don’t really speak up in groups unless I really need to,” Ms Komal told TODAY in an interview on Friday (Sept 27).

'THE CAUSE IS RIGHT'

“The reason why I'm speaking up is because (the climate crisis) is pressing, and I feel like this cause is right,” said the initiator of the rally, who prefers to call herself a concerned Singaporean citizen rather than an environmentalist.

The idea for the rally was seeded when Ms Komal attended a workshop on Singapore’s Biennial Update Report that was organised by her fellow speaker Ho Xiang Tian earlier this year.

The report contained updates on Singapore’s national greenhouse gas inventories and mitigation actions, and is submitted every two years by the Government to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Around this time, Ms Komal said she had been reading various climate reports about the need to drastically reduce carbon emissions. She also learnt that Singapore’s mitigation efforts against climate change were “not enough”.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), carbon pollution will need to be cut by 45 per cent by 2030 from 2010 levels and brought down to net zero by 2050 to ensure that average temperatures do not rise more than 1.5°C beyond pre-industrial levels.

For its part, Singapore has pledged to reduce its emissions intensity by 36 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030, and to stabilise emissions with the aim of peaking around 2030.

TODAY previously reported that Singapore is “well on track” to meet its 2020 pledge to reduce emissions by 16 per cent below business-as-usual levels.

However, Ms Komal is not convinced. “There is a strong contrast between the emissions target we are supposed to set, and what has been currently set.”

Said Ms Komal: “I felt, enough is enough. We need to speak up about this.”

Planning for the home-grown movement started in early July, said Ms Komal, and it was timely that there was a global “climate strike” being led by the Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg on Sept 20.

While they are not affiliated with Thunberg’s movement, the rally was held a day later to show that the organisers had “aligned themselves” with it. “Climate change is not (just) a local issue. It affects everyone.”

'TAKE BOLDER STEPS'

She said one of her objectives was to tell the Government it needs to “set stronger climate targets” and take bolder steps with its climate policies.

While she lauded Singapore’s strategies to adapt to climate change — S$100 billion will be invested on coastal defences against rising sea levels over 50 to 100 years — she worries that this may be too little too late.

Citing recent studies that Greenland’s ice sheets are melting at a faster rate than previously predicted, she said that Singapore’s current sea level rise prediction may be a “very conservative estimate” of what is to come.

Referencing official figures from the Government, she also said that industries form the bulk of Singapore’s carbon emissions at 60 per cent, while households contributed just 6 per cent.

Though individual actions help to keep carbon emissions in check to a certain degree, she said the figures show there is only so much they can do and there is a need for collective action that includes both the Government and corporations.

She added that if Singapore is “serious about the climate crisis”, it would not be expanding its petrochemical industry.

“It is important for respective institutions to divest fully from the most carbon-intensive industries in order to hit the recommended Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) targets,” she said, referring to the United Nations body.

WALKING THE TALK

Ms Komal said that the journey on awareness on climate change started in primary school where she was shown a documentary on global warming.

“There were many people who became silent after watching the documentary,” she said.

Yet, when it ended, she said people continued with their lives as though nothing had happened. “That reaction kind of startled me.”

She added: “This made me wonder how our minds work in terms of absorbing information about environmentalism.

“It also got me thinking about why people are not able to act quickly or justly in terms of the different types of environmental issues today.”

Ms Komal said she has chosen to ignore criticisms that have surfaced online since the rally was held, stating that it is not worth her energy trying to convince climate deniers because “they have a certain motive”.

Rather, she is hopeful for the future. At a tuition centre where she works, Ms Komal said she sometimes engages her primary school students on environment-related topics.

“It’s really surprisingly they know what is happening around them. They do talk about the environment-related projects they are doing in school, and sometimes they point out themselves, ‘Why are we using so much paper?’”

“It gives me hope that we are not apathetic,” she said.

While she is not ready to reveal the details yet, Ms Komal said plans are in the works to engage different sectors of Singapore.

On an individual level, Ms Komal does what she can to reduce her personal carbon footprint.

She has chosen to cut out meat from her diet, a hard choice that saw her relapsing once, and has even chosen to limit air travel to just once a year.

The ultimate sacrifice, for a student, was her choice to forgo the opportunity to embark on an overseas exchange programme next year.

“Many of my friends are (going), but I don’t think it’s worth the carbon emissions,” Ms Komal concluded, after weighing out the pros and cons of embarking on the programme.

“But at the end of the day, I need to do what is right, not what is popular,” she said.