States of Emergency

As our plane from Colombo descended into Kuala Lumpur airport for our stop over our cabin filled with smoke. The haze was so thick in the air we did not see the ground until about a minute before we actually landed. A state of Emergency had just been declared because the smog was so thick that people could breathe outside - it was hovering around the 550 mark (healthy levels are 50. Unhealthy are 200. Highly hazardous are 500). Everyone working on the tarmac was wearing masks. Smoke penetrated into the shiny world of the KL airport. I felt like I'd landed in some science fiction movie about a future where the pollution is so bad no one can live outside. Except it wasn't the future, it is now and it is fucking DEVASTATING that millions of people are having to live in places where they literally cannot breathe the air. The cause is bush fires in Indonesia, deliberately lit by the government and plantation owners (some of them Malaysian) and then not monitored. I can't understand why this isn't front page news in Australia. It's a disaster.

We landed at 7.30 pm, Australian time, not long before Sri Lanka's foreign minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar, was shot dead in a gun attack in Colombo. A state of emergency has been called.

I need to state the obvious: the planet is in a bad state and I hope being back in pretty, gentle and clean Melbourne doesn't lull me into forgetting.

Posted by Sophie at 05:44 PM