Reference: Stop sacrificing environment, Postbag, Bangkok Post, December 30, 2007

In Edmonton, Alberta there is a shopping center where, even in the dead of winter when it is forty below zero outside and not much daylight to speak of, one can go to a gargantuan indoor tropical paradise where it is sunny and warm and where there are all things tropical including a beach with artificial waves where one can go surfing. All humans aspire to hedonism given a chance so why should Asians be excluded? If energy and natural resource consumption by human beings on a per capita basis is a concern one should address it where it matters and where such consumption is an order of magnitude higher than that in developing countries like Thailand. It is weirdly hypocritical for a Westerner whose wealth and spending power in Thailand were generated by wanton consumption of natural resources to lecture the Thais on the evils of what little consumption they have been able to achieve.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand