There are issues that polarise people, and we call it political disagreement. In truth, such issues are not that important but everyone has been conditioned to think otherwise.
Is the climate change scary? Yes. Should it worry everyone? Yes. But when politics gets in the way, gone is proper global cooperation, which has been replaced by blame games and distortions of scientific facts.
Are humans handling the climate change correctly? No, absolutely not.
Political divide causes grave harm, yet it can be a lot more disastrous when it takes away the ability to really work together in a real emergency.
What happens on the Samsen Road is a real emergency.
It requires total contributions and devotions of the best brains in all of the Blue, Red and Orange camps. It requires “un-camping” of the camps. It requires their long-term unity to prevent it from happening again, either there or elsewhere.
The Samsen Road incident taunts the Bangkok gubernatorial elections, where engineering knowledge often gave way to politics. Chamlong Srimuang won decades ago portraying himself as a poor underdog. The Sukhumbhand Paribatra-Pongsapat Pongcharoen showdown in a later election was nothing more than a confrontation of the colours.
And although the current governor, Chatchart Sittipunt, has plenty of knowledge fitting the job, divisive politics greatly influenced his election victory. Voters casting ballots for or against him couldn’t care less if he knew why land subsides and how to prevent it.
What made news during Thailand’s 2011 massive floods? Of course, Thais saw frightening photos and monitored meteorological reports, but what also concerned Bangkokians were the “clashing of the colours”, which many feared could affect protection of the Thai capital.
How does landslide occur? We non-scientists with very limited engineering knowledge can only say that it happens when the force of gravity has a room to play and then overcomes whatever holding the rock, soil, or debris in place, causing everything to move downwards.
Also, we can only tell that common triggers include heavy rainfall, snowmelt, earthquakes, volcanic movement, and human activities like deforestation or massive digging or exploitation of underground water on a grand scale.
Of course, some human errors or corruption could lead to structural collapses, but, by and large, how the Senate is formed is not likely to cause it, and whether or a Cabinet member is “ethical” or not cannot prevent such a disaster.
The following is from a research written years ago by the people who knew best about Bangkok soil, its strengths and weaknesses: “Land subsidence in Bangkok is a pressing environmental challenge, demanding sustained long-term policy interventions
Although mitigation measures have successfully alleviated subsidence rates within inner Bangkok, neighboring provinces continue to experience escalating rates.
“… This study aims to provide future subsidence predictions for the near (2023–2048), mid (2049–2074), and far-future (2075–2100), employing Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR), Random Forest machine learning algorithm, and combined Shared Socioeconomic Pathways-Representative Concentration Pathways (SSP-RCPs) scenarios to address these challenges."
"The mean Line-of-Sight (LOS) velocity was found to be −7.0 mm/year, with a maximum of −53.5 mm/year recorded in Ayutthaya. The proposed model demonstrated good performance, yielding an R2 value of 0.84 and exhibiting no signs of overfitting. Across all scenarios, subsidence rates tend to increase by more than −9.0 mm/year in the near-future. However, for the mid and far-future, scenarios illustrate varying trends. The ‘only-urban-LU change’ scenario predicts a gradual recovery, while other change scenarios exhibit different tendencies.”
What does it tell us? Almost nothing. We only learn that it’s a big issue, but, as for the rest, the content is far beyond most people’s knowledge. If you can understand it in one reading and without having to consult the dictionary or AI, you are a genius.
The point is it is highly possible that 99 per cent or more of members of the House of Representatives and senators do not understand it, either.
They will need all the help they can get, from those who can comprehend it and do something about it. And that help must come from people of all “colours” working together without political prejudices.
Natural disasters are happening with greater frequency everywhere in the world and getting closer and closer to home. Humans have two simple choices.
Fight it separately while devaluing the other side, in effect denying potentially-useful help, in other words playing politics till we drop, or work together and thus survive together.
What makes you run for your life anyway? A government collapse, a political campaign collapse, or a big piece of land collapsing near you?
