it’s hard to argue that cities like Singapore, which have massive ecological footprints through their oil refineries and supply chains that stretch around the globe, actually contribute to the cooling of the planet. “Singapore can make itself into a garden because the farm and the mine are always somewhere else,” writes Richard Weller, a professor of landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. “I would call Singapore a case of Gucci biodiversity, a distraction from the fact that they bankroll palm oil plantations in Kalimantan, the last of the world’s great rain forests.”
