The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) and the Ministry of Health (MOH) have finally arrived at a decision regarding the mural of a smoking samsui woman in Chinatown. Shockingly, they have even arrived at the right decision, but even broken clocks are sometimes right: the mural is to stay up.

In one of the dumbest stories this year, the URA and MOH were considering the removal of the mural after feedback from the public (read: one person) saying the mural was “offensive” and “disrespectful”, and that the woman “looked more like a prostitute than a hardworking samsui woman”. On the part of the URA and MOH, the problem they had with the mural was that “the depiction of smoking on the unauthorised mural is not aligned with Singapore’s anti-smoking policy”.

In their view, the Singaporean’s mind is so feeble that any depiction of vice is enough to send us down the dark and decrepit road of addiction and personal ruin. Only our political betters are able to shield us from such things. Soon the only murals we will be allowed to choose from are the warning images on the cigarette packets: do you want the dead baby or the lung cancer on the side of your building?

Never mind that as usual the policy has no semblance of even-handed application. Will the Government censor any and all depiction of smoking and other vice on television and streaming services? Will crime and drug use be banned from being screened? Will MOH and URA ban all overweight people from appearing on any kind of public media or television and movies because that would presumably in their eyes an advertisement that being overweight is acceptable in society? After all, diabetes and other weight related illnesses are on the rise in Singapore. Presumably the MOH and URA are against these vices as well, not just smoking. Or do they not do it because the public backlash against such a policy would be too great?

It seems to be the case in this instance: the MOH and URA basically buckled under public pressure, after taking into consideration “diverse views from many members of the public”. This prompted them to finally come to the conclusion that, “Most members of the public do not see this as an advertisement for cigarettes”. Really? They couldn’t come to that conclusion by themselves? They needed the Singaporean public to tell them that? These are the vaunted elites that supposedly know what is best for you. These are the technocrats and bureaucrats that your tax dollars are paying to come up with inane policies like these, some of whom will one day become Ministers who will continue to make these inane policies.

I thought the whole point of the Faustian bargain we made with the PAP was that these people had some kind of superior cognitive function that allowed them to come up with policies which benefited the Singaporean people. After all as Lee Kuan Yew said, “We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.” Today not only do the ministries buckle under public pressure, the initial policies are so wrongheaded that it begs the question how they came up with them in the first place.

It’s always up to the individual

Somehow it’s always up to the individual to deal with climate change. There is a concerted effort by main stream media in Singapore to push individuals to bear the brunt of climate action. In a Channel News Asia (CNA) report titled “Even as plastic bag use at supermarkets declines, Singapore is in early phase of sustainability transition: Experts”, the article chastised Singaporeans for not doing more to protect the environment.

It’s your fault, you see, that you want plastic bags to dispose of your waste. Never mind that over 80 percent of Singaporeans live in HDBs and the primary way of disposing trash down the chutes actively encourages using said bags. If only the Singaporean citizen would stop polluting, we can finally end climate change and pollution once and for all.1

When I say this is a concerted push by the main stream media, what I mean is this: over the past few years there is an increased amount of commentary pieces which are aimed at encouraging the Singaporean public to “do their part”:

1. “How to beat the heat in Singapore, without air-conditioning” - CNA, 13 July 2024

2. “Commentary: Turning on the air-con shouldn’t be our only way of coping with hot weather” - CNA, 1 June 2024

3. “No air-con, please: How to stay cool with eco-friendly ways” - The Straits Times, 8 May 2024

4. “The Big Read: Reducing single-use plastics and disposables - are we there yet? Or are companies just greenwashing?” - CNA, 29 April 2024

5. “Commentary: Singaporeans’ reliance on air-cons will only lead to more discomfort” - CNA, 5 April 2024

6. “Commentary: Singapore has seen less plastic bag usage. Why not the same for food containers?” - CNA, 4 April 2024

7. “How to make homes cooler without cranking up the air-conditioning” - The Straits Times, 25 July 2023

8. “A billion new air-conditioners will save lives but cook the planet” - The Straits Times, 17 may 2023

9. “Commentary: Air-conditioning – the unspoken energy guzzler in Singapore” - CNA, 7 September 2020

The premise is always the same: what can the individual do to help the environment? It’s always about changing the mindset of the consumer, always about how the individual can impact the environment. Just to be clear: I’m not saying that changing your habits will have no impact on the environment. What I am saying is that the government and corporations should take more responsibility for the environment. Let’s put things into perspective:

First, the population of Singapore is so small that even though we do pollute higher on a per capita basis, even if we completely remove Singapore from the global pollution statistics we would constitute nothing more than a rounding error, and global warming will continue as scheduled. Singapore produces slightly less than 1 million tonnes of plastic waste a year, out of the 400 million tonnes of plastic waste produced globally. That’s less than a quarter of a percent of the total plastic waste.

Second, even if we disregard the insignificance we have on a global scale, and focus instead on just improving ourselves, introducing policies targeted at individuals instead of the government and corporations does not move the needle on pollution or climate change in any significant way. Of the 1 million tonnes of plastic waste, only about 200,000 tonnes of that was from domestic single use plastics (carrier bags, food and beverage containers as well as tableware and utensils). The often trumpeted statistic about the plastic bag policy is that it has reduced plastic bag usage at supermarkets by 50 to 80 percent. Let’s be generous and call it 80 percent. 80 percent of 200,000 tonnes is 160,000 tonnes, which comes to about 16 percent of the 1 million tonnes of total plastic waste. That doesn’t sound so bad, until you realise that the 200,000 tonnes of single use plastics are not just plastic carriers that come from supermarkets, it includes plastic carriers from all sources and single use food and beverage containers. This also doesn’t account for the demand of plastic bags going up in other sectors, increasing by as much as 10 to 15 percent. Even if we were generous and assumed that of the 200,000 tonnes half of it were supermarket plastic carriers (which I doubt), that would mean that the reduction of plastic waste comes out to about 8 percent. I wouldn’t be surprised if the actual number were much lower than that.

I’ve already spoken about air-conditioners and the inane push by the media to get us to stop using them, so I won’t repeat myself here. I will however speak about the the Land Transport Authority’s (LTA) Singapore Green Plan which from 2030 aims to transition Singapore’s vehicle population to become completely electric by 2040. According to Transport Minister Chee Hong Tat, carbon emissions by our “land transport system”2 accounts for about 15 percent of our total carbon emissions. Switching from a internal combustion engine to an electric vehicle (EV) reduces the amount of carbon emissions by 50 percent. So that only comes out to a 7.5 percent reduction in carbon emissions,3 and all at the cost of the private citizen. This 7.5 percent does not even account for any additional emissions or environmental damage done when producing an electric vehicle compared to a gasoline powered car. It takes between 28,069 miles and 68,160 miles before there are any benefits. The average Singaporean car is driven 17,500km annually, or about 10,937.5 miles. Even with the charity of assuming that all households keep the car for the full duration of the COE of 10 years, EVs will need to be owned for anywhere between 3 to 7 years before they present a net reduction in carbon emissions compared to gasoline cars. But because of the COE system Singaporeans are incentivised to change their cars every 10 years, which further diminishes the effects of this initiative. This would mean that the reduction in carbon emissions would likely be lower than 7.5 percent, at which point it begs the question why even have such a policy at all?

I am not against individual action when it comes to climate change, by all means please continue to reduce, reuse and recycle. What I am against is the Government mandating climate action on the individual. All of these policies make Singaporean’s lives worse in the here and now for an uncertain and undiscernible effect on the future which we will never get to see. After already being hit by record inflation levels, an increase to the GST, do we also need to pass the responsibility of climate change on to the individual? Never mind that these policies do not actually result in any noticeable reduction in overall carbon emissions or plastic pollution on the global scale, it is more important that the PAP be seen to be doing something. It is the very definition of performative.

The solution, according to the experts, is to educate the people more. Said Associate Professor Hannah Chang: awareness is important as “many times, people may not be fully aware or cognisant of the type of negative impact the single-use plastic bag has on our environment”. Of course everyone knows plastic is bad for the environment, if there are still holdouts over whether a non-biodegradable toxic-if-burned aquatic-animal-choking-hazard material that will last a million years if buried in the ground is bad for the environment, I think you would find that they are in the minority. But 80 percent of Singaporeans live in HDBs. The waste disposal chutes are designed for trash to be bagged before being thrown down the chutes. Or does the Government expect people to carry trash out piece by piece to be thrown down the common chutes? Either the Government has to redesign how our waste disposal works for the 80 percent of HDB dwellers or they have to accept that the people need the single use bags to dispose their trash.

How can the individual be any more effective than the Government or corporations at taking action against climate change? In both the examples above, the individual accounts for the minority of both carbon emissions and plastic waste. The Government on their part could accelerate the switch to nuclear power, which would eliminate as much as 40 percent of our carbon emissions. I would even settle for the Government deciding if they even want nuclear power, but make a decision so they can focus on other forms of clean energy if they so decide that it would be geopolitically unfeasible to have nuclear power. The Government could also impose plastic taxes and levies like the ones in the European Union if they were so inclined to deal with single use plastics. There are more solutions than passing the buck to the Singaporean citizen, it takes political will and creative policy making, not just looking for solutions that sound good and are easy to implement just so the Government can say they are doing something.

Singaporeans deserve a government who has a proper vision of how to tackle climate change; a government who is willing to come up with solutions, not just pass the costs down to the citizen. We have a new Prime Minister, but do we also have a new vision with creative policies and the political will to implement it? For the sake of this country, I hope we do.