Cheap Paper or Oxygen

When you can look directly at the rising sun, something which is impossible under normal circumstances, you get a sense of curious eeriness. It is like having a chance to peek into true nature through a forbidden and artificial opportunity.  For 3 mornings in a row I was not awakened by the usual blinding sun rays that blazed through the bedroom window. Instead I could stare at the sun, a sinister salted egg yolk shrouded in thick haze.

Singaporeans never had it this "bad". As Joyce Hooi, BT correspondent puts it humorously, there is a "Bending of Heads every hour on the hour" looking at a mobile device followed by "the Shaking of Heads"(tracking PSI reading). All these whilst some mask-less construction workers seem to suggest a "super-strain of the populace, whose respiratory systems are immune to particulate matter".

Jokes aside the feeling one gets from this episode include a sense of vulnerability and recognising the inability to have everything under control and plan (no matter how super-efficient one is trained to be). One watches in trepidation how our lives will be impacted by snowballing environmental ills from the onward march of market driven economies. As reported in the papers it cost a few thousand rupiah to burn the forest down with kerosene and a lighter, compared to about 9 million rupiah a day to clear the land mechanically with heavy machinery (super cost efficiency as long as environmental cost is forever not accepted in accounting standards).

Today Indonesia named some companies involved, Sinar Mas which owned Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) being one of them. Will I ever forget APP? I remembered clearly I had to skip one New Year Eve's count down at the club with my family some 15 years ago because I was in the office trying to complete an asset purchase transaction with APP. It was a nightmare as we hit several snags trying to complete the settlement procedures whilst adhering to our company's strict due diligence guidelines. In the end we had to exercise some flexibility given the normal standards of practices in Indonesia. We were also advised by our consultants to "Get Real' if we want to do business in this region. I remembered we were kind of mocked by how little we know of Sinar Mas' muscles and standing in the country. Later I found out that APP was amongst the largest paper and pulp companies in the world and our office's stationery supplier was one amongst many who import from them.

Well maybe it is time to have another deal with Sinar Mas again, this time perhaps to buy oxygen from their forests. As BT reported one Indonesian official as saying "Singaporeans complain when there are a few days of haze. What about the other 300 over days when we supply the fresh air?" Cheap paper or oxygen, your choice.

Now you know what I meant by having this sense of vulnerability.