Petro “Sains”, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
I don’t speak Malay. I’d assumed the “sains” in “Petrosains” translated roughly as it was pronounced: sai-ince. It was even billed to me as a “science centre”. After our visit this weekend, I wonder if it’s best translated as “propaganda”. Let me show you what I mean:
Through a simple game of reflexes, we learned how nerve signals are transmitted around the body:
And how people who burn lots of oil are just awesomer than people who don’t.
This hip, friendly dinosaur is rapping about how natural oil is:
He and his friends made it together, like, deliberately for our use, in some sort of cheerful prehistoric animal worker’s collective.
This hologramatic wand, if misused, will destroy petrochemicals:
Hurry kids! Design and implement a range of alternative energy sources! Physically wrestle the wand back under your control!
Drilling is cool fun!
Petrochemical Mascot Guy loves coral reefs so much he’s preserved this whole tankful for future generations:
Would we have had this much fun with bubbles if Uncle Petronas hadn’t supplied us with the ingredients to make our magic bubble wands?
And for those on whom subtlety is lost:
It wasn’t all about Big Oil, mind you – Petronas did take a moment to discuss the issue of renewable energy towards the end. This gave them the opportunity to present it as either a) slightly perverse:
Electric-powered windmill.
…or b) mainly useful to creatures which are likely to survive the apocalypse anyway:
“Solar”-powered cockroach.
…or c) highly controversial, and not especially effective:
Game play tip: nobody complains if you keep the original greenhouse-gas-emitting power stations intact, and it’s impossible to make enough energy without adding emissions or nuclear facilities.
Then there were the planes:
Ah, the planes – there goes my high horse. As a traveller, they’re my weakness, aren’t they? The thick, sticky stain on my carbon-hungry existence. The greenhouse-gas-belching elephant in the room.
Now, I can buy carbon offsets, of course – I’ve bought a few. I can explore closer to home, and make more distant trips worth their while, by allowing them extra time. And I can favour surface travel over air – up to a point.
Here’s the problem, though: flights are so often cheaper. Standing in the middle of the Petrosains Discovery Centre, I was struck all over again by just how wrong it is that a plane across Europe should be so much less costly than the same jaunt by rail. The secret’s in this exhibit, which helps kids explore the rising and falling costs of oil:
Toggle several variables up and down – supply and demand, for example, or economic growth – and watch what happens to the bottom line.
You’ve got to look at the variables they’re not presenting. Who pays for environmental pollution or habitat destruction? Shouldn’t that factor in to the price of oil? Despite updates in law since this exhibit was designed, I’m not sure the accounting’s much more correct in the real world today.
It was after five when I persuaded P to leave Petrosains – he was captivated. We made a beeline for our local roti shop, and sat back to enjoy bread, curry, and freshly-squeezed apple juice. And darn if I didn’t give the boy a stern lesson in critical thinking, bias, and questioning your sources; so much so that it – and not our overnight rail journey from Singapore the previous night – probably explained his early bed time and extended night’s sleep.
Kids are like sponges, people say. Every so often you have to wring out the dirty water.
***
I usually prefer to let you respond freely (and of course you still can) but I’m interested to know how you reconcile getting on a plane with environmental protection. Do environmental concerns alter the way you view travel? If you travel with kids, do you discuss the issues with them as you go?
This post appeared first at Journeys of the Fabulist and was shared as part of Ailsa’s Weekly Travel Theme: CLEAN and the Hearts For Home Earth Day Blog Hop #37.
I have an American friend living in Denmark whose guilt about flying lead her to declare that they will never ever fly again. They do however have the most fabulous rail adventures, I remember one trip they did from Copenhagen to Morocco which sounded brilliant! I wish rail travel was a bit cheaper and we would definitely do more…
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That sounds like an awesome holiday. I’m itching to look up the exact route they would have taken. See? This is the other reason people should be encouraged to take trains instead of flying. When it’s so much more expensive, it does give you pause, though.
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Embarrassingly, I have never considered the carbon footprint of all the trips we take. Considering that in 2013, the family racked up 129 hours of flight time, we’re rather awful. On the other hand, we walk a lot when we’re at home. The kids seem to only get in motorized vehicles on weekends. “Sains” does indeed mean “Science,” so “Petrosains” is essentially “Petrol Science.” It’s sponsored and heavily subsidized by Petronas, the Malaysian government-owned oil and gas company. I was laughing out loud on your take of the whole experience. Yes, it does to a lot of cheerleading about how wonderfully awesome fossil fuels are.
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That’s definitely a lot of flying. That’s not per person, is it? Or it’s 129 hours per person? Because in that case, wow, heck of a lot of flying.
Glad you were laughing (as opposed to offended on behalf of all Malaysia). I think it was the computer game at the end that did me in.
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Oh the elephant in the corner indeed! I know my carbon footprint is massive this year but I can’t just stay put in one country! We don’t drive here in Italy so I am trying to off set my ‘air’ footprint over time…pathetic I know. I am also guilty of not talking about it with the kids, however, just before we left Australia Max’s class did a project about the carbon footprint people leave all over the world and they really covered A LOT on the subject. (I was told how bad it was on the flight over)
Where did you even find that place? I can’t believe it exists!
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It’s not that hard to find – it’s right in the Petronas Towers in central KL, the one all the tourists go to, even the tourists who only spend a few hours. And yes, I know! I know.
To be fair, there is a lot of interesting science and engineering in petrochemicals, and I’m sure they were at least partly motivated by an earnest desire to present that worthwhile knowledge in an engaging fashion. I won’t draw you a pie chart to show how big a part of them was motivated in that way, but I’m sure it’s there somewhere.
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Also, the lectures from our kids. It’s like living with the lifestyle police sometimes.
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That is very true and I have a feeling they are not going to stop anytime soon!
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We’d better put our best feet forwards…
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The carbon footprint we leave behind is huge particularly in the travel industry – the travel company I work for has worked hard for many years to reduce its footprint and became a carbon neutral company – So most trips are carbon offset and so each traveller is helping achieve this- we offer the clients who buy flights with us to pay a carbon offset fee (it is optional) – The air travel bit is hard, we love to travel and am not prepared to stay put…- so we do other good deeds, recycle, trying (emphasis here on trying) to grow a little veggie patch, am sure we could do more though..
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It’s great to hear your company is trying to address the issues and at least making people more aware.
Telling people to stay home isn’t much of a solution for all kinds of reasons. Bruce Sterling once described this as a “dead grandfather” approach to environmentalism, because it focuses on living your life as if you were already dead, like your grandfather. Although my grandfather is actually still alive, but I take his point.
Offsetting trips is one approach and trying to reduce your impact in other ways is another good one.
A great thing about Australian corporate culture is it’s much more common to be allowed to save up holidays for a few years and then take off for a whole month or more at a time, rather than being forced into lots of one to two week trips instead. Just as well since you start at the end of the earth, too.
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True we are fortunate to be able to take big chunks of leave i.e. 3-4 weeks in one go very handy for travel and for families over the Christmas summer holidays when you don’t have access to childcare options
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I remember reading about a woman who had to go to a wedding in Australia from (somewhere in) Europe. She was worried about her carbon footprint so she decided to go by ship, train, bus, etc. instead. I think it worked out twice as expensive and was pretty much the same when it came to carbon output. And it took forever!
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Any idea where you read it? It’d be good to know how they worked it all out.
That’s definitely a long way to go and it would have taken forever (sounds like a great trip, though).
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Oh, was it this one? Came up top of google:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/greenertransport/5022546/Bridesmaid-travelled-to-Australia-wedding-without-flying-to-protect-environment.html
The article says the surface route produced less than 20% of the carbon emissions of the same route by air, though, so definitely much greener, but unfortunately more expensive – which is the crazy part to me. The greener route should be the cheaper route.
(Although they didn’t show their working, so I’m not sure if they subtracted ordinary day to day living expenses which you’d pay over that time period regardless of travel.)
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Oh wait – the expense isn’t shown in that article. This one (second on google) has a cost breakdown for a couple of people’s trips:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6287107.stm
I also notice they’ve worked out the carbon a bit differently, so it’s more like a 40% reduction going by surface.
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Yep, that’s her! She was in one of my English books 🙂 And she was lucky that she could take so much time off work – most people couldn’t.
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Yes, this is true! As touched on in other comments. Still, it should at least be more comparable on cost (if not cheaper) for those who can spend the time.
One of the comments on the second article says that basically what s/he learns from this is that it’s not all that practical to travel long distance without flying. There’s something in that. Then the commenter goes on to say short trips across Europe should be train/ferry/etc.
I don’t take it quite as far as that commenter does (banning short haul flights) but it’s crazy that the Eurostar – which is usually quicker centre to centre than flying – shouldn’t compete better on price, or that intercity train rides of up to eight/ten hours don’t compete well with short haul flights. It should be more tempting to take a ferry from eg Hamburg to the UK vs a flight than it currently is.
If the surface option was more competitive it would seem fairer to let people make their own trade offs.
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Bronwyn I am ashamed to say that this has not truly crossed my mind when I travel. 😦
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Maybe this is worth a bit more digging? (Or should I return to my regularly-scheduled let’s-not-overthink-things house style?)
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Well I am afraid I likely won’t be staying home Bronwyn. Although it might be interesting to know the environmental impact of taking a ship across the Atlantic to Europe vs flying.
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That’s kind of where the discussion takes me as well. So we still went to Malaysia over the weekend, but the fly vs overnight train question became a no-brainer instead of a conundrum. Although seriously, we’re talking sleeper trains, I don’t think that one would have been much of a conundrum in the first place.
I’m pretty sure you should take the cruise. They’re always talking about how shipping goods is so much better than air freighting them, so I assume it’s the same for people, and also, cruise.
I’m almost afraid to research that one properly in case I’m wrong and I can never make that argument again.
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Now Hubby and i just need an extra couple of weeks for travel….hmmm. I hear you Bronwyn and you make some good points.
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Yes, the time factor. That’ll get you, too.
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In India, during the colonial rule, Mahatma Gandhi encouraged people to “Go Swadeshi” i.e. buy handmade local stuff…like handspun clothes…Now though the thought behind the movement was noble, it was not really so easy to implement for the Indians, because Khadi was much more expensive than the clothes made in the British powerlooms…and that, to my mind, is the issue, the affordability. What do you think?
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Yes, money is a powerful incentive, more so with less discretionary income. I really think we should be trying to arrange things so the right thing to do is also the cheapest and easiest, but so often it’s not the case.
And of course the other thing there is that the places I named in the comment to And Three To Go, above, which have competitively-priced rail networks, often also have pretty low minimum wages. I don’t want to return to days where recreational travel is only accessible to the moneyed elite, but I don’t want to squeeze the little guy instead of paying for cleaner alternatives and/or damage repair – so I’m stuck. Such is my hypocrisy 🙂 .
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I honestly have not thought how our flights have impacted the earth. It just never crossed my mind! And I am from the San Francisco area where everyone drives hybrid cars and people are very into the “green” movement.
We also went to Petrosains and were a bit aghast at the oil propaganda. Z was a bit too young to really get it though.
I would be interested to know what forms of transportation are truly better for the earth though. Now you have given me something to research and think about. I would like to travel in a more green way, and if it’s economical than all the more!
Thanks for the great post, you really have me thinking.
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Being “green” is complicated. I’m sure since you’re familiar with hybrid cars you’ve heard the arguments about battery waste.
Generally speaking, my “rule of thumb” is that it’s greener if you stay on the surface of the earth. So trains, buses, cruises and even road trips *tend* to produce fewer greenhouse emissions than trips by plane. If you dig up any authoritative sources on the subject, let me know (as I’ve just banged on about critical thinking I should really back that rule of thumb up properly rather than just saying it’s “based on stuff I read”.)
That said, being a rule of thumb I don’t promise it’ll work in every specific situation. There’s other factors in people’s planning – like time – as well, of course. This is one reason I like overnight sleeper trains – they’re greener than flying, they go centre to centre, you spend way less time getting on and off, and it all happens while you’re asleep anyway. But while they compete on price in places like India, China and South East Asia, you do those same sums in Australia or Europe? Hah!
Anyway, definitely do some research and let us know what you find. I’d be interested to hear the latest, especially since the state of technology on this subject keeps changing.
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Critical thinking is right. Every initiative which purports to save the world has its pros and cons. And our kids are going to be the ones who choose what makes our world go round!
Great post, Joy.
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It is true, and I do have to be fair to Petronas by admitting that (even though I don’t think they were fair in presenting an unbiased account of those pros and cons).
Our kids will definitely have some big decisions to make (I’d like to think our time isn’t quite over on that front) and assessing each option on its true merits rather than being swayed by a feel-good sales pitch is a skill we all need to keep sharp.
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