In a shocking report that will be published tomorrow, the Stern Review will indicate that the cost of failing to act on the climate change will amount to £3.68 trillion. I immediately did a Google check and this is the result:

3.68 trillion British pounds = 10.8720601 trillion Singapore dollars

To write that all out, it will look like this:

SGP$10,872,060,100,000

(for comparison : World’s GDP - SGP$95.82 trillion, Singapore’s GDP - SGP$193.65 billion.)

In order to avert this global economic crisis, the reports advocates that the world has to spend at least £182 billion now. Surprisingly, the report also compares this to the amount the world is spending on advertising. Who will be paying for the cost here? They estimated that half will be from the government and half from private companies. There will also be a greater push towards the creation of a Green Tax to help defray this cost, which means many things will become more expensive in the near future - like air travel which was cited as one of the most lightly taxed area in transport.

In another report, Up In Smoke 2, produced by groups of aid agencies working in Africa, they have highlighted how global warming has created more extremes of weather across Africa. "Global warming means that that many dry areas are going
to get drier and wet areas are going to get wetter. They are going to
be caught between the devil of drought and the deep blue seas of
floods." Andrew Simms from the New Economic Foundation warned.

I guess it is usually very hard for young people like you in Singapore to appreciate how fortunate your life is. Immersed in a highly stressful and competitive environment and in our meritocratic system, most of you take it for granted that you deserve to have the very best, and that this society is all about the survival of the fittest. The poor people in Africa contributed nothing to this climate crisis, and yet they are the first to pay for it.

There are innocent men, women and children dying for your sins today. How do you feel?

P.S. A more complete analysis of the Stern Review is now on BBC.

General | No Comments »

It is the time of the year to celebrate… HOLIDAY ASSIGNMENTS!

Okay I am not trying to be a wet blanket but you need to work this hols so that you can improve next year! And there are some of you who really need those improvements, you know who you are. Plus I will be calling you up during the hols to meet up and check on your work. So I will make sure you won’t have a chance to do it last minute. Yes this is SERIOUS.

By now you should have received the holiday assignment worksheet. It took me 4 hours to draw it up so please don’t lose it!

Task One

This task is solely for you to try a new art form, hopefully it might be related somehow to what you might hope to do for your coursework next year. Please note that the themes are basically the elements of Visual Design. So you have to design your works around a specific element - e.g. red colour, etc. or a specific theme based on the elements - e.g. contrast between thick and thin, etc.

Graphic Design / Illustration - see threadless.com

Photography / Multi-Media - see flickr.com

Task Two

Report Writing - 1000 words on "My Top 5 Favourite Art work from i)15th & 16th Century; ii) 17th & 18th Century; or iii) 19th & 20th Century. If you really want to take Higher Art, you must do this.

Task Three

Portrait Painting - A3 size canvasboard. The topic is you and someone else. Aim for realism in this work. Your choice of medium is either Acrylic, Poster paint or Oil. I suggest those who are good with painting try painting in Oil to try it out. Use a canvasboard. Those who are not so strong with painting yet, this is your chance to prove to me again.

All work are to submitted when school reopens. Don’t ask me for extension this time. Sec 4s no longer have the time luxury like when you are still sec 3.

Sec 3 | No Comments »

Okay now I know who you are, the 20 of you.

If you have the time, please email me soon so that I can discuss a few things with you before the year ends.

Otherwise, I will call your home sometime next week or so.

I need to talk to you.

Sec 2 | No Comments »

I shall hereby welcome the new batch of 20 students who will be taking Art in Secondary 3 in 2007 most enthusiastically!

You probably know who you are, if you have placed Art as your first choice. Those who put it as second choice will probably not get it. But anyway, the number is still tentative so it is not confirmed.

So if you are one of the 20, what should you do now? My advice is that you should do lots of drawings now. And no, I don’t mean only drawing those manga figures. You should preferably be drawing real objects or people from observation. Don’t worry if you can’t draw them correctly. We will see to that next year.

And most importantly, you will need the mindset that you really want to do well for this subject. Ask any of the present Sec 3s now. Ask them how many nights they didn’t sleep a wink just to work on their Art Projects. And I am sure they will also tell you that they were not merely content to complete their projects, but they also want to do it better than all the work they have done before. Yes!!! This is the attitude you will need to survive in Art next year!

Good luck and see you all soon!

Sec 2 | No Comments »

The report released by the environmental group WWF today repeated the warning that came from several other reports before, that we as humans are consuming resources faster than the earth can replace them.

WWF’s 2006 Living Planet Report, the group’s biennial statement on the state of the natural world, says that on current projections humanity will be using two planets’ worth of natural resources by 2050 — if those resources have not run out by then.

In other words, we will be using twice the rate that earth can regenerate by mid century. In the BBC news report, we have already exceeded the earth biocapacity by 25% since 2003, therefore we have already started eating into our own planet assets since then. Once these assests are exhausted, our ecosystem will undoubtably collapse.

Do you know October 9th was this year’s Ecological Debt Day? It marks the day when the our demands exceeded the earth’s ability to supply resources and absorb the demands placed upon it. Here is how the date has been shifted earlier and earlier each year.

1987 - 19 December
1990 - 7 December
1995 - 21 November
2000 - 1 November
2005 - 11 October
2006 - 9 October

As in the scenario for climate change, it is forecasted that it is the citizens in the poorer countries that will be hardest hit in any ecological event as they will not have the means to quickly adapt or react to any disaster. As you sit in your air conditioned room reading this now, it might be hard for you to relate to the message here. And possibly for some of you, maybe even the recent haze was just a minor irritation in your daily life. As forests burn in Indonesia, there are countless unknown species of insects, marine life, animals facing threats of extinction daily, our various sources of natural fuel being extrated to depletion, our ever-diminishing rainforest, the threat of the expanding hole in the ozone layer, we wonder when will everyone get  the message.

For everyone of us, there is only one Earth.

P.S I know some of you laugh at this, and possibly laugh at me for making such a big fuss about it. No matter, I think I will be long gone before 2050. Those who laughed and their offsprings will bear the consequences anyway.

General | No Comments »