For most of this week Singapore has been suffering from the worst levels of smoke pollution in its short history. The problem was caused by the illegal lighting of forest fires by farmers on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. News footage has been quite shocking with a vast blanket of smog blotting out the sun. It brings back memories of the infamous London smogs of yesteryear when thousands of people suffered ill-health and even death due to the appalling levels of pollution. You would think that  mankind would have learned the lesson by now wouldn’t you? No? Neither would I.

Clearly nothing, not even the destruction of the planet, will stand in the way of man’s greed and avarice. Large forests all over the Far East, and not just Indonesia, are being cleared and destroyed to make way for the growing of palm plants. This is big business and world demand for palm oil is as strong and insatiable as ever.

It comes at a price though, as we are now seeing in Singapore, where pollution records were shattered this week, with the Pollution Standards Index reaching a massive 371. I don’t know too much about that index save to say that, like the Richter Scale with earthquakes, it acts as meter by which to measure the severity of the problem. And there is a huge problem, not just for the Far East but for all of us.

This is just another example, in a long list of misdeeds, of how we are destroying our environment, wiping out trees and plants, diverting rivers to form dams and obliterating wildlife as if there is no tomorrow. And the tragedy is, for our children at least, there may well be no tomorrow.

We have to keep the pressure on our government and other governments worldwide and it seems to me that the only realistic and effective way is to join pressure groups, groups like Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund. They have websites so all we have to do is find them on Google and pledge our support. We should all do it before it is too late.