ELC Gazette

Hi! I’m Rosma, doing Electical and Electronics Engineering. I am currently in my first year, first semester. For this ELC Gazette, I’m gonna handle the environment section, the fragile Greenlight, and I hope it will not be as boring as you would expect when we talk about ‘environment’. Duh! Whatever it is, hope there will be lots of fun soon!

When we talk about “environment”, we always relate it to our surroundings and our everyday life. In a smaller scale, being in UTP, we can say that it offers an ideal ambiance for students. This university is not a very large institution. Hence, it is much easier to organize the settings so that it will be perfect in every aspect, especially in terms of the surrounding. As we can see, the buildings are surrounded by natural trees here and there with natural-living animals such as monkeys. Despite the fact that Tronoh used to be a tin ore mine and the temperature here is God-knows-what, the natural forest plus the planting of trees around UTP now help to lower the temperature. Thanks to this improvement, the lives of the students here are much better now since it is not so hot anymore. I know that the presence of trees cannot completely reduce the degree of hotness here but something is better than nothing, right? All hail to the trees!

In a larger dimension, Malaysia is a peaceful country with all the typical environmental problems such as air, water, and sound and earth pollution. With the increasing number of motored vehicles and factories throughout the nation, the air now is almost completely polluted. But smoke that is released from vehicles and industrial plants are not the only cause of pollution, especially air pollution. For example, in 17 August 2009, a forest fire was set by the Borneo dam developers which contributed to haze in Malaysia and Singapore. The developers are trying to build a hydroelectric project in Borneo, thus forcing them to set fire on thousands of hectares of rainforest in the dam area. This situation adds up to the problem of haze which was already worsening the region. To cut it short, all I am saying is that we as human, who share this one Earth, should have the responsibility to protect our Earth for us and also for the future generation. There must be other alternatives rather than destroying the Earth and letting it ‘die’ slowly. If there is a will, there is always a way.