Lynas, road accidents and ogres

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You are the village leader. If you were truly concerned about the safety /well-being of your people, what should you do ? There are actually lot of things that you could do bearing in mind, of course, that your time and resources are likely to be limited. How do you prioritize ?

One good way to prioritize your efforts is to examine what are the greatest threats to your people. Determine what causes the greatest threats or risks to your people and focus your attention on it. It is like this. Lets say 3 ogres are approaching your village. The ugly but small Ogre A is capable of killing 1000 people per hour. Ogre B is capable of killing 100 people per hour. The gigantic but cute Ogre C is capable of killing only 10 people per hour. Given that all of us have limited resources, it is pretty obvious that you should focus on bringing down Ogre A because that way you could save the most number of people.

Unfortunately, this is where many leaders often fail. Why ? Because many of us have the tendency to focus on appearing to protect their people from sexy threats (i.e. threats that attract media attention, threats that sound scary) even though these threats are often very minor compared to other mundane causes that kill many more people.

What do I mean by mundane threats ? Road traffic accidents. Road accidents kill a lot of people in Malaysia. Lots. But why dont we find politicians or NGOs with placards standing by the roadside demanding improvements in road safety. Why are there no facebook campaigns to reduce road accidents ? Why dont the MCA, PAS, PKR, etc put significant pressure on the government to improve road safety ? Why dont these people bang on the door of the JPJ or Road Safety Department ? Very easy answer. It is not sexy.

Now, let's look at Kuantan. It is true that the Lynas plant po! ses a ce rtain amount of risk to the surrounding population. However if you live in Gebeng, Kuantan, the chances of you dying due to a road accident is many, many, many, many, many, many times higher than you dying of cancer due to the Lynas plant. The chances of you dying of food poisoning or disease due to poor sanitation, choking on food, are way higher than getting any form of cancer from Lynas or other industrial facilities in Gebeng.

Folks, we need to protect our peoples health and improve their well-being. The best way to do it is to focus our efforts on the ugly Ogre A, not the sexy Ogre C. Even a simple mundane thing like campaigning to improve road safety will yield a thousand times more benefits than campaigning to stop Lynas. If all the people who have been campainging against Lynas have put in the same effort into improve the safety of our roads, we could have saved a thousand times more lives. But then, road safety is not very sexy. sigh.

Monyet King says

1. I think many people are going to hate me for posting this article.

2. Let me also qualify by saying thatI have no interest whatsoever in Lynas. I have not worked for them neither do I intend to work for them.

3. Before you go rambling about voluntary and involuntary risks, a lot of the risks on the road are also involuntary. When you are walking, when you are hit by someone else, etc.