I’ve been fighting against the prevailing culture for the past decade of my career. And for those who blame things on culture and act like it cannot be changed, they are being delusional. I have a few examples to show:
- How did we get from flagging for a cab on the street to punching our mobile phone screens to hail a cab?
- How did we get from ‘solar power’ is too inefficient and there is not enough space in Singapore to targeting a 2GWp solar by 2030?
- How did we get from being in kampongs where we helped each other and lived for generations in a house to thinking that our financial lives depend on getting BTO, then selling it after MOP and then upgrading non-stop over our adulthood?
While it takes time, culture can be changed. It also takes identifying some loose bricks in the existing edifice to overhaul the structure of our prevailing culture. Energy transition is one tough one to crack, but that said, our region in Southeast Asia has already moved quite a bit from the days of coal-fired power generation. Yes there was a bit of attempts to catch on with the hype around hydrogen but the dollars and sense prevailed at least for now.
So I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a lot more content to teach all of us about energy transition and to be able to learn together. There is a whole lot of de-stigmatising, trying things out, and unlearning our previous biases to be able to move the culture a bit and accelerate the transition. There’s a question of format, level of engagement, how to manage and nurture a community and so on. I guess I’ll have to dive in head first.