Environment needs new consciousness

Planning a long term approach to energy sustainability is not easy. Every business and individual is by definition firmly stuck in the past, and the mental shift to change thinking and habits can be very traumatic.

The UAE is almost 40 years old, but that has been four decades of profligate environmental waste. Water and energy have been squandered in frightening amounts, and there has been little incentive to change. Power remains cheap, glass is still the favourite cladding for large buildings, and not enough dirty water is recycled to save the huge costs of using desalinated water for every purpose. But there are some important signs of new thinking, such as Abu Dhabi's massive Masdar project, or the start of some green building codes and better general environmental consciousness.

In this context it was important that Yale's Professor Daniel Este brought new thinking into the UAE this week at the majlis of General Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces. His ideas on making the polluters pay, and building incentives for care and conservation, can have a very profound impact on the way the UAE runs its environmental affairs.