Climate Change in Malaysia: Getting Started

(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Darshana. - And I'm Tess. - We're part of the podcast team at Climate Action Malaysia. You're listening to Alamak, a podcast dedicated to talking about the climate emergency in Malaysia. We're part of Kami's ongoing efforts to raise awareness and create conversation surrounding climate change. - Climate Action Malaysia, better known as Kami, is a grassroots climate movement led by Malaysian youths based on the principles of climate justice. Kami facilitates diverse civil society groups in understanding climate impacts to mobilize the declaration of climate emergency in Malaysia. In this episode, we're going to introduce our audience to the fundamentals of climate change from the science to its midst. To provide you with a solid understanding of the uphill battle we face as a society. - Our guest today is Eelie Nadia, co-founder of Kami and prominent climate activists. We discussed what climate change looks like in Malaysia, how real it is, the communities it affects and what the future looks like for this country. We even go into a fun round of myth busting with one of Malaysia's best. So sit back, relax and enjoy. - Thanks Nadia for being here and speaking to us. And I think we should start at the very beginning in discussing the fundamentals of climate change, what it is and why we should care. So I guess the first question is, if we had to know one thing about climate change, what would it be? - Okay, climate change is real and it is already happening. It's not something that some of the impacts are something that we can't see, but we can feel in terms of the increase global temperature and some of the things that we can experience is heat waves that we are seeing more, the occurrence are quite frequent and it could, it is like an annual season of heat waves that we are seeing in this region and particularly countries that is nearer to the equator. - All right, I think for a lot of people, as you mentioned, climate change is more of an abstract concept that's only obvious if it really affects your quality of life. So I think that's part of the reason why people are hesitant to sort of change their lifestyles very dramatically because they don't think it will have much impact on the climate change movement. But how long does the earth have to sustain itself without humans acting on climate change? And what's the worst that can realistically happen? - I think the earth can sustain itself without humans. That's the thing. With or without humans, the earth will still be there. How this kind of condition with resources that used to be abundant for us is getting more scars than some of the conditions that we used to live in our quality of life is getting lesser. I think humans be four degrees Celsius, we can, the planet will survive. There will be, of course, a change of, there will be evolution. It will, evolution has always been happening on earth. And I think maybe perhaps humans will not be the dominant species on earth should we do nothing. And yeah, that is itself the existential crisis that we are facing. - Yeah. - Okay, and I think focusing on Malaysia for a second might be an obvious question. But what do you think are examples of climate change in Malaysia that are the most kind of apparent to you? - So like I mentioned, heat waves, they are more frequent than ever. Our party farmers are already facing these brands of climate impacts in terms of heat waves, which kind of lead to droughts, longer droughts, and eventually yield loss for the petty crop. And this could incur, this has incurred damages to the farmers' economic power, loss of their financial safety net, tearing the fabric of the farmers. They also experience psychosocial impacts. Then we also see intense precipitation that might lead to flooding. We have seen this happen like a month ago, where we have unprecedented areas, experienced longer inundation. That means it gets, the floods doesn't receive as soon as possible, take days, weeks for them to receive. And this incur losses to lives, this kind of tragedy leaves a trail of death and destruction in the areas where this occurs. And there's also the loss of biodiversity that we are already seeing, not only on land, but also in the ocean, where we have coral bleaching happening in some parts of beautiful coral ascent blotch in Peninsula, Malaysia, and also in Borneo. And coral bleaching only means that it signals the collapse of marine ecosystem. And once that ecosystem has already collapsed, that means there goes the fisheries, and then also the economies of the people living in coastal areas that is highly dependent on such ecosystem for their livelihoods. So we are already seeing this happening in Malaysia. And for me, these are dangerous times because it affects food security, water security, the economy of Malaysia, and eventually the social fabric itself. - That's very scary that we've managed to damage the ecosystem to its very core, to even the plantains that give us the most oxygen. So I guess an obvious question that needs answering is apart from what you've mentioned before, why should we care about climate change now when it doesn't really seem like large corporations are also doing their part? - I think the question is why does this situation matters so much, right? What's going on? Basically why are the corporations are not taking appropriate action? I think this has to do with the system that we are currently in. It always has always valued profit over the people and definitely the environment. I think that the data about climate change has already been there since the 1970s, but serious action that has been initiated based on that. And I think a lot of climate movement scientists as well has highlighted how the current system does not really support the idea of a regenerative or an economy that is sustainable probably because it's not profitable. So this is I think one of the main problems of why corporations are not really doing serious action and mostly doing greenwashing and et cetera is to protect the people in power or the state of school. That means the people in power will always have the control over the masses and things like that. So it's kind of insane when you think about it, but that is how the world is right now. And I think a lot of movements around the world is trying to educate the masses so that they can finally be empowered and finally take that step to make the necessary action. Yeah. - Yeah, and you mentioned a bit about education. And I think social media has raised quite a lot of awareness about the harmful effects of climate change. But equally, I think there's been quite awful dissemination of information by climate change deniers online. So I read a tweet the other day from someone saying that climate change is merely a natural occurrence and there's been no drastic change in our temperature weather in recent years. What do you think the role of the media is if there's any role in climate change education? - Well, absolutely. I think the media plays a really critical role, especially right now. Media is in Malaysia. Don't really cover much about climate change and do analytical pieces about, say, you know, a climate impact or any, you know, flooding tragedies that we have. There's no specific mention about why that happened. There's no, no in-depth. It has always been very superficial. So I think it's really the time for Malaysian media, news media to actually cover issues about, issues on the climate crisis with more in-depth analysis rather than, you know, having an interview with a certain minister and just copying them in verbatim without even, you know, doing, you know, a follow-up question, whether the, and checking whether this, are these data that has been presented to them? Are they accurate? Are they misleading? There's no, there is no such thing. If you see, there's only very little news media, very occasionally does such stories, but it's very rare. And I think that's also, it comes back to a lack of, you know, climate education. We don't have it here in Malaysia. So a lot of us grew up without knowing what is hitting us right now. And the subsequently journalists or editors, news media don't have the capacity to communicate climate reports, such as the IPCC and other, and other kinds of climate reports that there is out there. I think that, you know, there is a need to build the capacity of journalists in news media to understand all this graphs all this, you know, the statistics, the climate models, and somehow they need to relay this information to the people in its most relevant sense, because it can be very overwhelming and very daunting. And I think the media also has a really pertinent role to amplify local scientists' voices. And we don't have a lot of local scientists that has received this kind of coverage in the local media. I think it's time to, you know, go back to our scientists and amplify their voices and the studies that they have done in particular on climate change. Yeah, I think the media has to step up and to step up, it takes a lot of one courage because you need to question, you need to demand accountability, right? And also you need to invest in learning. Like I said, you need to invest on learning how to read climate reports, how to actually report, do coverage about this reporting. - Thanks so much for the answers, Nadia. So what we're gonna do now is we're gonna do a rapid fire round. We have compiled some questions for you. And what we need from you is a true or false on these myths that surround climate change and maybe a short explanation if you can. So are you ready? - Yes. - Okay, so the first myth/maybe truth. The Earth's climate has always changed. - Yes, but it's not an easy explanation because I think the kind of climate change that the Earth has always experienced occurs in the span of millions of years. But the one that now that we are facing happens over the span of 200 years since the industrial revolution. And we are seeing carbon in people in our atmosphere in levels that we have never seen before. So that is what scares me because it's anthropogenic and the rate is faster than the natural climate change that has always happened on Earth. - So in terms of whether or not changing climate, sorry, I'm gonna pause and I'm gonna rephrase that. - So essentially in terms of whether or not the climate has always changed, it's true but for climate deniers, this is a false myth, yes? - Yes. - Okay, second, climate change is a problem for the future. - No, because we are already experiencing climate change now. - Right, renewable energy is the only solution. - No, there's no silver bullets in terms of the energy consumption and where we should source our energy. And I think we should be realistic in this. I think the next few decades we must have a mix. Our energy mix must be more diverse. So we are not only dependent on one certain energy source. Right now we are looking to get all of our energy from solar. I don't think that is wise. I think we should diversify but we have to really lessen our fossil fuel consumption immediately. - Okay, now this one's a bit interesting. Getting rid of humans will fix this. - I think this is my personal opinion. No, it will not fix this because we are actually trying to fix this for us, right? So why are we trying to get rid of us? I think what we should get rid of is this systemic problems that we are seeing from all levels of society, from the normal average people up to the people with power. So that needs to change, yes. - Right, next, wealthier countries should do more. - Absolutely, yes. Some of the wealthier countries that we are seeing right now have a mass, they are wealth from degradation of environmental degradation that happens on ever since the Industrial Revolution and even before that money that wealth that they have a mass from the colonization of the people in the global south and United States as the highest historical carbon emission until today. So I think these countries must pay the reparations and the loss and damages that is happening on smaller countries, especially countries in the global south who has less capacity in facing the brands in adapting to climate change. And also because these countries, for example, like Malaysia or the Philippines, we don't contribute much to climate change overall, but we are facing the consequences, yeah. - Okay, now, we know that you're not a fan of talking about climate models in a short period of time, but if you could quickly do this for us, the last myth, I promise, climate models are not accurate. - No, and yes, partly because climate models is so work in progress, they are very complex and some of the earth systems are still not fully understood because the elements are all in flux within the earth system. So earth models take this different elements into the modeling, into the calculations, and et cetera, but they can come up with a trend or result or projection. And models also has this some level of uncertainty for example, in science, in climate modeling community, cloud is a big uncertainty in climate models, and it's well known as that spatial temporal resolutions also can contribute to less accuracy if they have less resolution, that means higher resolution have a more accurate projection. And but then despite this amount of uncertainty, scientists find climate models that we have now, this work in progress to be pretty accurate because they are founded on the basics of science, that means science is like itself always learning, disproving and finding better data, improving on that. And this kind of solidifies the confidence of scientific community that we already know that human emissions are changing the climate. So we know that this will impact the entire planet. So there is no confusion or this is pretty much there. - Yeah. - Right. Okay, and that sums up the rapid fire round, and I think that brings us to the end of the podcast as well. Thank you so much for your time, Nadia. We really appreciate you coming on to the podcast and giving a climate change 101 to our listeners. We're nearing the end of our episode for today. Let's quickly recap what we've learned. Absolutely, I think without a doubt, we've definitely learned that climate change is real and it's happening and there's just no running away from it. Acknowledging climate change first and taking action second is necessary not for any other reason, but for the survival of humankind. We've also learned how climate change is affecting Malaysians now, from paddy farmers in Kedah to fishermen in coastal areas in Sabah and Kwan Tan, to us who live in urban areas. We also talked about flooding and heat waves, something that Malaysians are not strangers to. What's the one key takeaway for our listeners today? I think the key takeaway for our listeners today is this. Climate change is not a far away problem. It's important that we all care about it. More importantly, we do something about it. And the first step to that is making an effort to learn. I think that's very well put, Darshana. That summarises this episode perfectly and brings us to an end. If you like this episode and like what we do, don't forget to share it. Thank you so much for listening.