Activist Suraendher Kumarr -- Singaporeans Should Pick Environmentalism Over Economic Growth And With Jobs

Shell and other major oil companies must fall!" "We need economic degrowth!" "Let workers strike!" These are the shouts of SG climate activist Suraendher Kumarr who lately emerged in the climate change scene.
Ironically, saving the world wasn't Kumarr's priority. Ever since his days in NUS as a political science student, Kumarr has been dabbling in all types of problems like student activism, LGBTQ, minority problems and labor difficulties, everything you title -- except the surroundings.
His present fascination with environmentalism goes only as far as it intersects with his pet issues of labour activism and his anti-capitalist ideas.

So he's just being an opportunist, nothing wrong with it, right? Well, yes but not if his ideas are still full of contradictions and will cause grave economic costs for the country if heeded.

Take for instance his telephone to pressure large petroleum companies like Shell and ExxonMobil to fall due to their role in carbon emissions. That would largely certainly lead to a tragedy if it were to happen.

Oil and gas is still a very important industry and a huge employer in Singapore. Imagine if it were to close, not only will there be mass retrenchments in the oil sector itself, many other businesses relying on gas and oil would be fighting as well with greater cost and tens of thousands of employees would be put off. These employees cannot be retrained overnight and they'd be pressured into financial distress. Some would wind up performing Grab. As somebody who sees himself as a champion of workers' rights, it is absurd that he is pushing for such a movement without considering just how incompetent it is.

Then in a paradoxical approach to demonstrate that he stands by workers, he led a request against gasoline price hikes as he argues it is impacting delivery cyclists .
So here we've got a"climate change activist" opposing a measure to reduce emissions to the sake of demonstrating solidarity with disgruntled workers. This is not only self-contradictory but myopic. Taxis, private hirer drivers and motorcyclists who use their vehicles for work will in fact get rebates so the immediate impact is minimal. In the long run, the greater effect is on energy reduction that's the motivation behind the increase in petrol duty instead of revenue collection since most of the accumulated earnings is going to be channelled to customer rebates to facilitate the transition for those relying on their automobiles due to their livelihoods.




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