Dear MEL Topic Readers,
This country’s love affair with air conditioning shows a Catch 22 of climate change
Singapore is an island city-state located only 137 kilometers north of the equator. It is a highly developed and densely populated country where 5.6 million people live in space just about the same size as New York City. The climate in Singapore is equatorial, hot, humid, and rainy throughout the year, thus people rely on air conditioning, which makes the city-state even hotter. Also, urban structures and roads of the city trap the heat during the day and release it at night, which causes the urban heat island effect. So, on top of global warming, there is local warming in this already hot city-state. Air conditioning indeed helped Singapore transform from a British colony into one of the most developed business and financial centers and brought its per capita GDP to one of the highest in the world. But as people get used to living in air-conditioned environments throughout the year as the outside temperatures rise, Singaporeans are accelerating both local and global warming, just like any other densely-populated urban megacities.
Read the article and learn about Singapore’s love for air conditioning.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/09/asia/air-conditioning-singapore-climate-change-intl-hnk-dst/index.html
This country’s love affair with air conditioning shows a Catch 22 of climate change
Singapore is an island city-state located only 137 kilometers north of the equator. It is a highly developed and densely populated country where 5.6 million people live in space just about the same size as New York City. The climate in Singapore is equatorial, hot, humid, and rainy throughout the year, thus people rely on air conditioning, which makes the city-state even hotter. Also, urban structures and roads of the city trap the heat during the day and release it at night, which causes the urban heat island effect. So, on top of global warming, there is local warming in this already hot city-state. Air conditioning indeed helped Singapore transform from a British colony into one of the most developed business and financial centers and brought its per capita GDP to one of the highest in the world. But as people get used to living in air-conditioned environments throughout the year as the outside temperatures rise, Singaporeans are accelerating both local and global warming, just like any other densely-populated urban megacities.
Read the article and learn about Singapore’s love for air conditioning.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/09/asia/air-conditioning-singapore-climate-change-intl-hnk-dst/index.html
No comments:
Post a Comment