Hazing the haze

Malaysia is once again enveloped in a cloud of smog, ash and smoke drifting across the Straits of Melaka, reminding us once again that our nation isn't any sort of an island. And it isn't just the smog and ash that bind us, we're locked into a spiral of money, blame and perhaps a manifestation of truly neighbourly feelings.

I'm not sure how this is being reported in Indonesia. But the spin could easily be that rich corporate interests in Malaysia come to Indonesia, exploit the Indonesian lack of resources and inability to enact rigorous/ any enforcement of environmental laws, then siphon the profits back to Malaysia. This is not a situation where Indonesians win, any more than it is a situation where Malaysians or Singaporeans win. Not even the politicians. The only people who stand a chance of profiting are those who are in it for just that, a petty profit.

But it isn't only the monied profiteers who suffer from the root cause of this malaise. We all suffer from the inability to distinguish wealth from money. Wealth cannot be measured in bank account balances and capital expenditure, in diamond rings or even coal-fired power stations. Clean air is a source of communal wealth - but it is only when it is endangered that we realise its value. The forests being destroyed are a source of wealth, the peat burning below ground, the mangroves they feed into. Our collective problem is valuing money over wealth.

If we're going to solve the real problem, which isn't just the haze and isn't just the corruption and isn't just police brutality or road deaths or the beating senseless of helpless animals, then we need, urgently, to re-inject the ethical into the everyday. Ethics has become the pastime of academics, who need to fill in ethics applications, and scholars who labour to become philosophers. It seems far removed from modern religions, as scandal after sordid scandal involving the church(es), the purveyors of everyday barbarity remind us. We need an ethics that lives in our every breath, informs our movements and, at the very least, informs our purchases.

The haze is linked with the women who die in garment factories in Bangladesh, with those worked to death making gizmos and gimmicks in China, those bleeding in mineral-fuelled conflict in Congo and Rwanda. And we can do something about it, and it starts with recognising that there is an alternative.