Monday, July 28, 2008 Youth told to address climate change issues
AN ENVIRONMENTAL advocate and lawyer apologized to students attending a climate change forum last Friday, saying that her generation is “partly responsible” for the present environmental crisis.
And while maintaining that the Philippine constitution protects the right to a “healthy and balanced ecology”, lawyer Gloria Estenzo-Ramos of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) Environmental Action Team, said the government has failed to ensure its citizens of this right.
“Yet, the government is not taking the right to life seriously,” she told students of the University of San Carlos who gathered to hear international environmental activist David Noble speak on climate change.
She cited as an example the existence of two coal-fired power plants in Cebu, as well as oil explorations in Tañon Strait and in Argao.
Ramos said these violate the Department of Energy Act of 1992.
The Cebu City and provincial chapters of the IBP had recently issued a joint resolution calling for the halt of coal-fired power plant operations in Cebu.
Resolution
The resolution also called for the immediate implementation of the Metro Cebu Airshed Management Board, which has long been mandated by law but has failed to take shape.
“There’s a problem in the executive level. Even the DENR (Department of Environment and Natural Resources) is helpless,” she added.
She commended Noble, 30, for bringing his call for a “healthy urban governance” to different countries.
During his talk, Noble said he was taking the call to young people, since “the business and government sectors really need to do better” in stopping the ill effects of climate change.
2DegreesC, the pro-environment company that Noble founded five years ago, takes it name from predictions that global temperature will rise by two degrees Celsius in the coming century. (KAB)
