Shell and other major oil companies must drop!" "We need economical degrowth!" "Let workers strike!" These are the cries of SG climate activist Suraendher Kumarr who recently emerged in the climate change scene.
Paradoxically, 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 kinds of problems like student activism, LGBTQ, minority issues and labour difficulties, everything you title -- except the surroundings.
His present fascination with environmentalism goes only as much as it intersects with his pet issues of labor activism and his anti-capitalist ideas.

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

Take for example his call to pressure big oil companies like Shell and ExxonMobil to collapse due to their role in carbon emissions. That would mostly certainly result in a tragedy if it were to happen.

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

Then in a paradoxical approach to demonstrate he still stands by employees, he led a request against gasoline price hikes as he argues it is affecting delivery cyclists .
So here we have a"climate change activist" opposing a measure to decrease emissions for the sake of demonstrating solidarity with disgruntled workers. This is not merely 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 which is the motivation for the increase in petrol duty rather than 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 own vehicles for their livelihoods.




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