Silt stired up from "Voice of common sense"

I got an immense, and maybe perverse, sense of pleasure from the responses to this article. Not all were positive, but it was definitely going in the direction I wanted. The parrying back and forth was most satisfying, and gave me much hope that our media can finally be a "true" public sphere...

First, Chia Hern Keng's "Country's survival comes first" (6 Dec) takes at swipe at environmentalism. I was made to sound like a elitist tree-hugging hippies. I had a good chuckle at it, because that is what I am furthest from, but then it got me as to how serious his opinions can mean for our green movement.

As it was, Marryanne Maes can to the rescue with "Development that ignores impact on the environment can hurt a nation" (7 Dec), espousing sustainable development - I point that I seemed to have failed in bringing across. Saved me the need to respond, really.

And then we had a letter from Mohammad Fahmi Ahmad Abu Bakar, "How about an undersea tower instead?" (8 Dec) with an additional section on the same page by Edric Sng about the feasibility of his suggestion - "Wouldn't it be nice? Just one problem ..." (8 Dec). I believe Edric is also the editor for FiNS Magazine.

All in all, a good workout for writers. But my concern is still whether all this fine writing has brought greater awareness to sustainable development and if it will have any effect on the development of the Sentosa IR, now publicly awarded to the Genting consortium. N