Why do we wait until disaster strikes before learning to care, not just for ourselves, but for the environment and other living things as well? The Sungai Kim Kim chemical spill in Johor is a case in point. We only took note after hundreds of people were affected and hospitalised.

It all boils down to attitude. Our attitudes, from the top down, must change. We wrongly assume that what we cannot see will not harm us. The irresponsible people who dumped chemical waste into the river likely didn’t give two hoots that the effects downstream could be devastating.

It’s also about the pursuit of money. Doing things the proper way is expensive. A chemical stack costs a lot, but it is vital to treat noxious chemicals before they are discharged into the atmosphere. A waste treatment plant is costly, but in the end it may save lives as well as the environment.

Even our land is being polluted. The BBC reports that Malaysia has become the new dumping ground for the world’s plastic waste. Irresponsible owners of landfill sites in Selangor burn the plastic and pollute the atmosphere. People fall ill because of the fumes. Whatever happened to enforcement?

There is also a whiff of corruption and cronyism in the mix. When I toured a river near Kuala Sepetang, in Taiping, to marvel at the fireflies there, villagers complained that an oil palm factory was discharging waste upriver.

They said they told officials in the forestry department who alerted the relevant authorities so that action could be taken and those breaking the law could be stopped.

But the villagers alleged that the company owners contacted their political friends, following which the investigation came to a halt. This is a shocking abuse of power.

The effluents killed off the udang galah spawn which need clean, clear water to thrive. This, along with tourism, had been a major source of income for the villagers. In one swoop, their livelihoods were seriously affected.

The spillage also affected the insect population along the river banks. The firefly population decreased, tourism numbers fell, and the villagers were again deprived of their source of income.

When an issue is brought to their attention, ministers must realise that they cannot view things in isolation. They must see things as a whole and interact with other ministries to solve the problem.

At the height of the HIV/AIDS scare in the West in the 1990s, healthy young gay men were contracting AIDS and dying. I was working in East Malaysia at the time. I asked officials from the health ministry about the Malaysian response in the event of a similar outbreak in the country. They looked me in the eye and said, “There are no gays in Malaysia. We have no cases of HIV/AIDS.”

It was only after many children became infected from contaminated blood transfusions that a friend from the ministry told me attitudes were slowly beginning to change.

But have things changed much? Not really. On March 6, tourism minister Mohamaddin Ketapi was reported by a Berlin paper, Berliner Morgenpost, as saying that there are no gay people in Malaysia.

It looks like we need to urgently educate those at the top.

My work in East Malaysia also involved looking after the environment. The attitude of everyone, from the leaders to the people, was abysmal. No one really cared about the environment.

In both East and West Malaysia, environmental protection laws are mostly ignored or flouted. There is a little more hope today as more and more young people have become involved and are conscious of the need to care for the environment.

On the whole, our attitudes are lackadaisical and mostly apathetic. Even in the 90s, people did not respect the environment. Industrial stacks spewed black smoke and noxious fumes. It still happens today, and when complaints are made, factories simply switch to polluting at night when they think no one is looking.

The same happens with effluents. Factories discharge their spent chemicals into rivers, drains and waterways because it is cheaper to do this than to spend money treating it.

If you notice a river that looks like a foamy bubble bath, with an oily sheen on its surface, or if you see dead fish floating or fish gasping for air, you can assume that the river is contaminated because someone upstream is discharging chemicals.

But there are many good people who do care. A few decades ago, the Asian rare earths processing plant outside Ipoh was shut down because concerned individuals and scientists were aware of the effects of radioactive waste on the environment. But before the plant was shut down, many people were arrested because they cared and demonstrated.

This is why activists and concerned people have protested about Lynas, about the gold mining company in Raub, and about the bauxite pollution which contaminates the air, soil and waterways in Kuantan. They know what happened decades ago and they do not want it to happen again.

Don’t wait until it’s too late to care. Education is essential, but our attitude towards the environment must also change. What we see outside our windows is not a giant rubbish dump. It is the place that our children and grandchildren will one day inherit.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.