Climate change awareness gaining peace prize

The Alfred Nobel Foundation has just awarded the 2007 Peace Prize to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and Al Gore, for "..."for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change"

This is great news. Climate change is happening, that is sure enough, but there are large unknowns as to the actual impacts, scale of the impacts, time line and possible measures to alleviate them. That doesn't mean we should do nothing; this generation, our generation, is burdened with the task of making sure that further activities down the line, from now on, take into account potential impacts on climate . That is the main message of UNFCCC and Al, and hats off to the Nobel Committee for recognizing an important message when they see one.

Congratulations to the winners!

images from http://www.nobelprize.org/

Public transport improvement in Jakarta

Unlike many people who whine about the current traffic jams in Jakarta (most of the non public transport-users), I look forward to all the public transport improvement measures, esp the bus corridors. On Friday I had the fortune to be stuck in traffic and seeing all the construction going on, soon all the major thoroughfares will be criss-crossed with these public busses.

As for all those whining masses, even more disincentives for them to take their cars on the road. I just don't get why it's so hard for most of these people to switch to public transport. Some are switching to bicycles, pretty daft to me, with all the smog and motorcycles on the road. Surely an enclosed vehicle, without the need for your physical exertion, is better? But I've given up trying to figure out these people. Their excuse has always been that public transport is not practical and uncomfortable. Well, hello! Millions of people take them and suffer the longer commute because others, more well to do, refuse to do so. Improvements take time to happen, and now the busway system and it's queueing method is more orderly. If you wait to switch until it's all perfect, well that's just not going to happen and you'll just add into the longer queue for everybody by not switching.

The next thing needed to punish those who insist on taking their own vehicles is a steep tax (congestion charge), including for motorcycles, with the proceeds to be used directly to improve public transport system.