Haze is causing many schools to close. Directly some teachers and children may be secretly pleased. The indirect impact is more severe. Longer breaks still, after 3 Mondays off this month. Missed classes to be replaced. Syllabus to catch up with. Homework (schoolwork, rather) that remain unfinished/ unmarked too, a Malaysian staple. Cost to parents for added hours in daycare (one of my friends was turned away as she was dropping off her son at school). Economically & productivity-wise, this does not bode well.
However I am not here to talk about the closed school. I am going to
speculate surmise on the reasons behind the haze, based on broad reading of popular media (and social media).
For years, Malaysia Singapore and Indonesia have been at loggerheads about this haze issue. It is yearly occurrence, so much so that memes have popped up saying that we have 3 seasons: hot, rainy and hazy. What is the cause? The diplomatic answer is: due to the hot & dry weather, some forest fires have ignited and since in Indonesia there are HUGE forests these fires take time to put out. Hence the haze. [The opposite argument though: Is the Brazil/ Amazon forest fires having a similar impact on neighbouring countries?].
Malaysia and Singapore collectively called out Indonesia: that they must do something about it. How could they have shrouded their neighbouring countries in heavy unhealthy smoke? Indonesia clapped back by saying: these smokes originated from Singaporean and Malaysian (palm oil) farms that practice slash & burn methods to cut costs.
[My planter aunt told me that in Malaysia, poison is injected into the old palm oil trees & eventually the trees will shrivel and die. Thereafter, they will cut the bark & its leaves and take them away in lorries for further processing/ recycling/ re-purposing. In some instances the old trees are uprooted to be re-planted as decorative plants elsewhere in Malaysia].
Repurposing vs Burning: which one is cheaper to carry out? Hence the burning in Indonesia. Perhaps due to financial constraint. Perhaps because they can. [Is there a law in Indonesia that penalises open burning?]
So we end up with this unbreathable smoke. We get irritation in the eyes & breathing tracts, and the long term effects are speculated to be severe (and remain to be seen).
What have the leaders done? They appear to have been playing ping pong. No specific call to action has been made. Malaysian and Singaporean firms deny any such practice (hence it probably wasn't/ isn't their doing). Indonesia says this should be a concerted effort yet Malaysia and Singapore do not see the need to share any fire-fighting or long-term haze prevention programme costs with Indonesia. [After all, the root cause of the problem originated from Indonesia to begin with].
So where are we? In Denial. Superbly.
As a result, citizens of Malaysia, Singapore (and Indonesia too especially) inhales this smoke till the end of September. [Do we consider ourselves collateral damage?].
Malaysia Met Department announces that we may seed the clouds to induce rain (to reduce the smog) but no substantial clouds have formed yet for this to happen. Cloud seeding, I have been told, can equally be costly (maybe not as costly as fighting forest fires) and not always successful.
So there. When we should be addressing the commercial firms' bad practices & even at the extreme we should probably boycott oil palm altogether (to initiate a call to action), we are accusing each other & not doing anything in the meantime. Except supplying masks & advising the public to stay indoors/ avoid outdoor activities, and to drink more water, and to go to the doctors when having breathing difficulty.
The Elephant in the room is laughing its head off.
