Butterfly effect

According to the Ministry of Trade and Industry press release on 10th October 2006, advance estimates showed that Singapore’s real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rose by 7.1 per cent in the third quarter compared to the same period in 2005. On a quarter-on-quarter seasonally adjusted annualized basis, real GDP grew by 6.0 per cent, compared with a 3.4 per cent expansion in the preceding quarter. This is a healthy sign that our economy is doing well and that our economic growth is on target.

However, before we start to get ready to pop the champagne or expect a bigger year end bonus, we have to consider this.

Using the GDP as an indicator of development has been considered as inadequate as this place excessive emphasis on purely economic aspect of development.

Ecologist, environmentalist and some economists have begun to advocate the concepts of sustainable development, which encompasses the trinity of social, environment and economic concerns.

Can the pursuit of economic growth be compatible with sustainable development? Is there a need to sacrifice some of today’s economic growth to meet the needs of other people and those of our children in future? Will economic growth bring about a strong and healthy society existing within environmental limits?

Before we consider these weightier issues, let consider how we take care of the environment we live in.

Firstly, an appeal to dogs’ owner. It would be great to pick up your dog’s poo when you walk your dogs. By leaving the dog’s poo alone, other people are given the opportunity to step on it which is an event that they do not appreciate very much. Moreover, it shows that the dog owner do not give due consideration to other users of the park.

Secondly, an appeal to cat lovers who took it upon themselves to feed the stray cats all over Singapore. Do ensure that the pellets of cat food are not left for the ants and rats to part-take too.

Thirdly, an appeal to Singaporean not to spit indiscriminately as the spit may contain air-born germs that might spread disease to others.

The above three examples show that we do not take the environment as our own private personal space and so we will do what we please when we please with the environment. For example, would we allow our dog to shit all over our living room? What about spitting in our bedroom?

We seldom do so as we want to keep the environment we live in clean. Thus we all have this mentality that it is o.k. to dirty environment that does not belong to us. Witness us behaving as environment terrorist in Johore Bahru.

We need to change the way we approach the environment. In the chaos theory, the buttery effect is used to describe how small difference or changes in a dynamical system may produce large variations in the long term behaviour of the system. The idea is that a butterfly’s wing might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that eventually cause a tornado to develop.

This concept might be difficult to comprehend or believed until we realized that a single match that was lighted has caused the haze that enveloped us for the past three weeks.

Dog’s poo, cat food, fool’s spit. Small changes, just like the flapping of a butterfly wings. We seldom pause to think how these might affect other people or events. Worst, we do not realize that these changes might in the end cause others events to occur that might harm us in the end.

Small action. Can we realize in time that ultimately we are responsible for all the environmental problems that have been plaguing us for the past few years?