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| Mitigate or Die |
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| Thursday, 04 February 2010 09:17 |
  THIS year of 2010 has been declared by the United Nations as Year of Bio-diversity, in another effort to encourage peoples, agencies and governments to take steps to preserve or repair the ecology - where plants, animals, sundry organisms and us humans live closely and interdependently with one another. Wish that we were not as technologically-sophisticated as the Navis are in the sci-film “Atavar” and so could do a much better job in protecting the planet and its diverse inhabitants. But instead, with our vaunted knowledge and machines we have been abusing and hurting badly Mother Nature since the start of the Industrial Age some 200 years ago. In his World Day of Peace message last January 1, Pope Benedict XVI implored on people to shed off their lifestyle of wasteful consumption and materialism to ease up on our excessive and increasingly destructive use of natural resources. The prestigious Worldwatch Institute also recently warned that unless the rate of global warming and depletion of natural resources is curbed to levels recommended by scientists, Earth’s crazed climate will wreak worsening apocalyptic havoc on human populations. But even if there were a thoroughgoing agreement in Copenhagen last December though, it is likely that mankind has actually crossed the point of no return in our destruction of the global environment. As a major indicator of this inevitable apocalypse, the meltdown of all ice caps is accelerating and being completely irreversible, it would likely result in the gradual but eventually total devastation of the global climate. In a worst but not too farfetched scenario, predictions of sea rise, extreme and destructive weather conditions, drought and famine, wars over water and energy shortages, epidemics from the breakdown of biodiversity and similar catastrophes will all come true. Eventually, very severe climate conditions could incapacitate life-sustaining technologies and industries like food production, seriously threatening human existence around the world. Living aboveground may become unviable if not impossible because of hellish atmospheric conditions. To repair the human-induced destruction, Earth may naturally enter a new geological age in which human civilization as we know it today cannot exist or continue. In the meantime, all that enlightened, concerned local communities can do is to mitigate the ill effects of climates gone amok. Where there is found a collective will and grassroots resolve, people should reforest or preserve their trees to ensure the availability of fresh water, replant or preserve mangroves to nurture their marine resources and biodiversity and thereby prevent epidemics. They should find ways to safely and efficiently dispose of garbage and industrial wastes. They should recycle their goods to optimize the use of materials and energy and use green energy technologies. For the Philippines, it is useless for its citizens to expect their politicians or local and national governments to do something meaningfully positive for the environment. On top of paying lip service to environmental protection or passing laws that are never enforced, politicians and bureaucrats regularly receive bribes to look the other way whenever environmental laws are violated. No pro-environment programs are actually implemented long enough to make a difference. Hence, this critical burden becomes the responsibility of the people themselves. The life and death effort can begin with social movements and advocacies on the part of sectoral groups. In the face of the eventual total collapse of Nature, all that a local society like Zamboanga’s can do is to forestall this apocalypse through mitigation measures. And there is no time to lose anymore, the time to advocate and to act is now. |