Eco Challenges and Opportunities for Modern Society: Is the Human Species at Stake? by Hasnul Halim

INTRODUCTION

hasnul — 2014-12-12 11:05:23 UTC

Did you aware that all of the human activities and action can affect the environment of the planet? The planet of the Earth nowadays is rotting due the global warming made by the human beings. In 10^th December 2014, University of Malaysia Pahang held an important event at Sports Complex Hall at 2 pm. The three of us gathered at mosque of UMP to went to the event. The weather outside of the building was hot. There was crowded people with different ethnics inside the building. When we entered the building, we felt the temperature inside the building was quite cold and Hasnul was shivering because he was skinny. As we were waiting for the event to started, the retro music was being played. Some people takes a selfie, laughing, sleeping, eating and chatting with each other. There was an exhibition located on the back of the hall.

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The “Green Man” or “The Greenest Person on Earth”, Mr.Matthias Gelber arrived on 2:40 pm in the evening, which was 40 minutes late from the actual time. The Master of ceremony asked the audience to silence their phone to avoid any interrupt to the event. Later, the audience were asked to stand up to honour Mr.Matthias and our Vice Chancellor and some sort of song were played. Our national anthem, Negaraku, were sang by the audience followed by the “Maju Gemilang” which was our university song were played. The recitation of dua’a was performed by the Ustaz and the Muslim audience raised their hands to amen the dua’a. As the event were about to start, the professional speaker and the MC tells more detail about Mr.Matthias and the crowd of people seems to keep all ears to him. Later, the Vice Chancellor of UMP, Professor Dato’ Dr Daing Nasir Ibrahimgive a talk on the ECO. The greenest person on the earth, Mr.Matthias finally spoke on 3:01 pm which was the time the event finally started. Mr.Matthias had shown to the audience on his presentation slides and he put up a good fight to catch the audience’s attention. He started his talk on his backgrounds; he is from Germany. He also showed us his “Germany kampong” village. He showed us a picture of two child in a farm, he was the child at the younger age. He said that during his time, English language was the worst in school of about 400 students. He didn’t think that English language is important during that time. Later, he also talks about ‘botak’ people as he was bald. Being bald was a huge advantage to our planet as he said he was saving our planet Earth since he doesn’t need to use shampoo as he was being bald. As we all know, shampoo or shower gels and other cosmetic products along with a burgeoning number of other chemicals, are finding their way into the environment and are posing a risk to sea life, plants as well as people's health. That sound really gets under his skin as he was the greenest man on earth. When he went to Johor, he bought some Durian. He said that Johor’s durian taste quite bad but the durian was cheap compared to Pahang’s durians. He said that the durian in Pahang was expensive but he loves eating durian. The audience clapped at him as Mr. Matthias loves to eat our local fruit. He extend his talk by saying that although Pahang’s durian is more expensive that the durian in the south of Semenanjung, our football association of Pahang, Pahang FA is much better than JDT FC as Pahang lately won the Malaysia cup defeating Johor Darul Ta’zim. He also showed his image in TV2 channel television during talk in a programme. He continued by persuading the audience to get along with him by banning polystyrene products such as polystyrene food container that we always bought from the cafeteria to carry our meal. He also said that using polystyrene is such a waste as polystyrene is hard to decompose. He substitute polystyrene by using a Tupperware. Then, he said that without using polystyrene, we can save our natural resources as polystyrene is made of petroleum. Thus, a zero polystyrene campaign can help us save the planet Earth as he continued his speech enthusiastically. Mr. Matthias don’t bought the thing that he doesn’t need. He used to recycle things to save the environment.

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The audience were attracted to his speech as he managed to make a multipurpose product by his own such as his pencil case and his belt. His belt is multi-colour as he combined two different belts into a belt. He suggest that we should preserve our mother earth and about half of the audience seems to agree on his opinion. He also said that the audience were great as the audience were supporting his opinion. “We should help the planet”, he said. Mr. Matthias again showed his slide when he was in Germany during winter season. He talks about snow as the global warming makes the whole world climate changed. There were about 7 billion of humans and here in Malaysia is about 28 million humans on our planet. We need to reduce the amount of paper as we consumes a huge amount of paper daily. We also must reduce the amount of water consumption to save keep the earth green. The smoke from cigarettes and vehicles had polluted our beloved mother of nature. He said that ‘kampung’ people (village people) makes a simple life by using bicycle to ‘jalan-jalan’ as he does not own even a single car. Village people tend to use the resource efficiently as the people does not need the use of air-conditioner. The people were depending on the fresh air from the outside from the wooden house. According to Mr. Matthias, our Earth temperature had risen by 1.5 C^o in a world report. The sea level head rose to 4 metre. Mr. Matthias spoke that plastic bags that made a huge contribution of disadvantage to the Earth as the plastic bags are the major factor that blocks the water canals. Concrete fragments from building had also makes the water in the flow channelbeing blocked. In Cameron Highlands, Pahang, there were activities of illegal logging. This makes Mr. Matthias upset as Cameron Highlands should be green. Cameron Highlands is not cold anymore compared to years ago. Later, he showed his own recycled materials Mr. Matthias’s pencil case and even his own organic cotton underwear. He was proud as he can save our planet by making a pencil box which was made from recycled materials. He keeps on recycling things and he used the recycle bin in his residential area but sadly the recycle bin disappear but he couldn’t figure it out why does it disappear. He said that there were some cleaner that selling recycle things to the recycler. This was an advantage to the Earth then he quoted “If we have the planet, we still have the planet when we’re not there anymore”. In a statistics, the recycling rate is now 2 times higher than before. He told the audience that United States and Europe were polluted. China is also polluted in terms of carbon dioxide or CO². “We are using half of the earth resources”, Mr. Matthias said to the audience. According to the statistics, about 240 until 340 Malayan tiger were left in the forest. Malayan Sun Bear also face the threat of extinction. The highest income generated in Malaysia in tourism which is the number five from Malaysia, he continued. “We only have one planet”, thus we must survive together with the animals. The Asian Haze made a huge impact to Malaysia. Lastly, the event ends with a 20 minutes of question and answer session.

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hasnul — 2014-12-12 11:05:56 UTC

After the question and answer was done by Mr. Matthias Gelber, we visited an exhibition of the event. There were many booths have been held at there. Example of booth are G-bricks for greener environment, Renewable green fuel bio waste and others booth. This purpose of the exhibition is to show us people about how to save our mother nature. At the exhibition, there many crowded people gather to get information about the items in every booths. We were thinking that many people were excited to goes to the exhibition because the environment of this event was really cold because of an air conditioner and easy to look for the booth. We can see many ways to prevent our mother nature to be extinct. First booth that makes us to go is G-bricks for greener environment. This g-bricks was really interesting because it shape really great and have 3 kilograms of weigh. Others special about this g-brick is it can be created by using waste item and the bricks are really cold when we tried to touch it. Information about this g-bricks that we got the bricks were been using on project cabin building at University Malaysia Pahang. When we heard about it, we had a little bit shocked and really amazed about it. After that, the last interesting booth that we been visited is renewable green fuel from bio waste. Information that we had achieved at this booth were Recycling bio waste is producing bio energy which is renewable in nature. Clean renewable bio fuel is the best substitute to bio coal and other fossil fuels. When we know about this, this is really interesting information to know. We also had seen the fuel that been created by using bio waste. The colour of fuel is like a normal fuel that we always see. This is the interesting way to save our mother nature. In short, we really got many information and many ways to save our planet or our mother nature. We were hope that we can help to save our planet in the future.

CONCLUSION

hasnul — 2014-12-12 11:06:06 UTC

In conclusion, this event is really good to been held. We think we should come again when this event will been held in 2015. On the other hand, we can see and listen our beloved Vice Chancellor of University Malaysia Pahang to give a speech and we also can hear the good speech by Mr. Matthew Gelber. Lastly, we were attracted to see improvement about exhibition when this event will be held again next year. Therefore, we hope that many people in this planet will know about how important our planet and mother nature and need to be protected.