Try blaming ourselves for the floods and landslides in Penang

Understandably, many people are unhappy with the floods that hit Penang during the weekend because of traffic jams on the roads and dwellings getting flooded where never before had the residents experienced being under one foot of water or more!

Understandably, there's a lot of finger pointing, all being pointed at the previous state government who stood accused of licensing developers who had been levelling hills with abandon and causing soil erosion.

Of course, there is a great measure of truth in the accusations. Everywhere you go, you see hills being raped, earth being exposed and little effort being made to foresee what can happen when there's heavy rain. It's all in the name of profit, the mighty RINGGIT.

But it's not only development that's the cause of the people's misery and loss of property. If the Bukit Mertajam forest park, where's there's no development at all, can experience a landslip, you cannot totally blame development in Penang for the landslides and floods.

If there's anyone to blame, it can only be the human race: not just us in Penang but people every where. Humanity is the real cause of natural calamities. Humanity with our inherent greed, our self-centredness and disregard for the environmental rights of our neighbours. We are the ones to be blamed.

We are the ones contributing to climate change. The opening up of the ozone layer, our contribution to global warming. There are 6.721 billion reasons (estimation as at Sep 2008) why the ice shelves at the Arctic and Antarctic are being lost at alarming rates. We are the reason why storms are getting more violent. It's not only hurricane season in the United States; it's also global weather imbalance. We are seeing and experiencing unprecedented changes to the global weather patterns. And now, humanity's greed is coming back to haunt us. (Read the take by the BBC here.)

It's easy to blame the local developers, it's easy to blame the previous state government; it's easy to blame the federal government. Yes, they do have their parts to play in the calamity but at the end of the day, it's never easy to blame ourselves - both you and me. How much have we done today to save the environment or at the very least, make ourselves aware of it?