By Daniel Koh Kah Soon
(This article originally published in Wesley Methodist Church quarterly magazine Tidings, issue 2008 the third quarter.)
An Inconvenient Truth?
The world is facing an environmental crisis. Unless we are completely out of touch with what is happening around the world, we cannot read newspapers, surf the net and watch television and not be aware of it. It is true that some people may dispute the cause and the gravity of the crisis. For example, there are those who have scorned at Al Gore’s controversial An Inconvenient Truth and some of them have seen it as alarmist. Yet in spite of that and the refusal of the United States to endorse the Kyoto Protocol which seeks to manage our vulnerable environment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an independent scientific body set up by the World Meteorological Organization and by the United Nations Environment Programme in its Fourth Assessment Report (2007) has sounded the latest wake-up call for the leaders of the world to address the growing environmental crisis or face the consequences which such a crisis may have on the well-being of our common home, the planet earth which we inhabit.
