Air conditioning is a temporary solution to a permanent problem. Someday when we're 80 and the world is collapsing around us, when we can only go outside in a hazmat suit, is that when we realize what we've done?
It is no longer possible to walk from one place to another without complaining about the heat, and I too am a victim of this mindset. A good solution was to build a walkway from Pavilion to KLCC. The bad idea was fully air-conditioning it. I know, I tend to complain in college about the heat and how I wish everything was air-conditioned everywhere, but logically speaking, it's ridiculous. Air-conditioning is like a giant bubble, and someday that bubble will pop and nothing will be there to cushion your fall. A good question is who is paying for the electricity bill. A better question is who will pay for all the cfc gas and shit you're releasing into the air.
It's not just what we're doing, but what the previous generations have already done, and what we're teaching our future generations. (I can officially say this now, because I have 2 nephews and a niece! The future generation!)
They're born into this world into an air-conditioned room, and spend their lives running about in rooms with white walls and marble floors. When they get slightly older, they spend their time doing homework in cold rooms, staring at white walls. To procrastinate, they sit at the same table, but pick up a PS3 controller. The idea of heat is as foreign to them as sitting on grass.
Shouldn't they be able to run around in a playground without fear of the heat? Some kids these days can't bear the idea of having no air-cond, much less the idea of actually being outside in a playground digging for worms. Trust me on this, it's fun. Playing masak-masak with rocks and leaves, digging for worms, then running and screaming when you actually find one. Running around primary school, falling down, getting bruises(that last until you're 18). These are memories that stick with you all the way until you turn into a young adult, which is what I believe they call people my age now.
Where have those days gone? Were we really the last generation to have these things? When air-conditioning was a luxury, not a necessity? Why do we only seem to enjoy nature when it's our wallpaper, or when we're looking at from the inside of a glass wall? Things used to be the other way around, when the kids were the ones outside looking in, not inside looking out.
I never used to understand why my father couldn't stand my music, especially back when I was younger. The man can't even take Jason Mraz. Recently I was downloading some Santana, when I remembered his entire stash of CDs, so I pulled up a chair next to the CD rack and went through it. I came out with Led Zeppelin and acid jazz. (Didn't really fancy Zeppelin though.)
Every generation thinks itself better than the next generation, and I can safely say it's true. My dad hated my music, the same way we hate this generation's music. I guess somewhere along the way, we grew up, maybe a little too soon.
The same way I'm talking about the new generation not spending enough time outside, is the way my mother used to tell me how when she was a kid all they had were sticks and stones. Perhaps this is just evolution, and every generation has to change. I just don't think it's right that we exploit nature the way we do. Isn't there a better way for us to evolve? Technology is good, yes, I strongly believe in that, but if it's making us evolve in ways that aren't good for ourselves (Like big fat obese pigs with everything at our fingertips, literally) we need to stop. You know what they call bad evolution? MUTATION. We're mutating into big fat pigs.
The only way to stop this mutation is to change our habits. It is in our very DNA to resist change, but when we succumb to it, daaaamn guuurl, we succumb; and this is a fact that is slowly leading us to our big fat deaths (in Hazmat suits). Why can't change happen the other way around? Change must happen, and the only way we know how is by force. Since I'm behind my keyboard, and you're behind your screen, I can't possibly force you to switch off your air conditioning, start exercising, and plant a tree now can I?
So we should all try asking nicely. Can we just.. Try to use a little less of everything, and try appreciating everything a little more?
Find out for yourself, whether or not you're truly trying.
Happy Valentine's Day folks, love your environment :) Al Gore would be proud!
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