Singapore Fiddling Carbon Reduction Numbers

Singapore is an island nation, with vast amounts of low lying land reclaimed from the sea filled with shopping malls. The highest point on the island, apart from Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew getting on his high horse from time to time, is a jungle covered hill called Bukit Timah. It's probably fair to say that Singapore stands to suffer more than most countries in the event of climate change, and that is why it is such a disappointment that the government of Singapore is not being honest about what, if anything, it intends to do to prevent global warming.

The official line is that Singapore will achieve a 16% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020, based on a comparison with the "business as usual" case. There are a few problems with this, for example the magnitude of the proposed reductions is in fact very modest, and the making of the reductions is actually dependent on the rest of the world also agreeing to making significant commitments. Such a shame that the Singapore government is not willing to take a lead a topic that any forecaster can see is bound to be a significant issue for Singaporeans in years to come.

However, the real problem with the proposed reduction is not the magnitude or the lack of leadership, but rather that the numbers are completely disingenuous, and that this reduction is in fact nothing of the sort, because the "business as usual" case, which the reduction is supposed to be relative to, is a purely invented hypothetical scenario that appears to have no realistic basis in fact.

The Singapore government has published carbon emissions data from 1990 to 2007, and the average annual growth in emissions is 3.6%. What we might expect is that "business as usual" represents a continuation of that 3.6% trend, and the 16% reductions are below that. However, what we actually find is that the "business as usual" outlook predicts an arbitrary 5% annual increase in emissions, and not coincidentally at all, we discover that achieving the stated "goal" of reducing carbon emissions by 16% in 2020, actually involves nothing more complicated than "reducing" the annual growth in carbon emissions to 3.6%! That means, the reduction of 16% actually involves doing nothing at all.

So Singapore actually plans to do nothing on the topic of climate change, a course of action that will probably cause all sorts of problems for everyday Singaporeans, but less so for the rich elite who can always move to a nice bungalow or landed house on high ground in Bukit Timah.