Trackpadder: Journeys of a teacher: Hazy Singapore: Before/After shots

I have lived in Singapore for well over 13 years now and I have never seen the air quality deteriorate to such a poor level.

Seeing the skies like this reminds me of my days in China in the late '90's. Even to this day Beijing struggles with pollution but of course the source of that is cars and factories (a result of our insatiable desire to have inexpensive goods in department stores worldwide).

Die hard sun bathers refuse to give up even in today's haze.

When the PSI (pollutant standards index) rose over 300 yesterday evening, I think all of Singapore knew this was not going to be good. The Daily Telegraph highlighted the Singapore government's opposition to the slash and burn fires and the smoke drifting across from Indonesia. Meanwhile today a senior minister from Jakarta added fuel to this debate by stating "Singapore shouldn't be like children, in such a tizzy", referring to Singapore's reaction to the haze.

Regardless of all angst, the fact remains that haze this chronic is not a good thing, be it in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia or wherever I know Australia suffers from smoke haze when the bush fire season hits or when control burn off is implemented but the former occurs as a result of natural disasters (or not in the case of deliberately lit fires) and the latter as good land management practice. I think slash and burn ultimately is not good land management practice. So really all this comes down to is sound farming practices, education and funding. Who takes responsibility for that is an open ended question. Clearly, though, this was one case where burn off was not carried out carefully and as a result, uncontrolled fires spread from one plantation to another resulting in an unhealthy situation for all concern.

Just to demonstrate how bad that affect has been, here are some before and after shots of various locations in Singapore.

Before/After shots ...