Tuesday, June 10, 2008 Covington: The wrong way By Gary Covington Looking In
IT'S like a daily procession of refugees -- the poor folk who walk past my house twice a day to and from the NFA rice store next to Buhangin public market. Poor because they're walking - they can't spare the few pesos to ride a habal-habal or trisikad -- and poor because mostly they're wearing cast-off clothing, ukay-ukay, most obviously the shoes. Other people's shoes never fit quite right, do they? I've noticed that begging is on the up too.
Here we are, hardly into June, and already kids are out with their tin can tom-toms at traffic intersections. In the shopping districts there are gangs of tots -- real tots no more than five, six or seven years old -- who grab at your bag or clothes.
Give some loose change and all is well, ignore them and they'll deliver a kick or punch before scurrying off and disappearing into the crowd.
Don't these tinies have parents or a home to go to, even if it is a shanty on the beach? Or is it the parents sending them out?
Saturday was a good day for column-fodder, particularly an item on the business pages noting how an alternative fuel company is scouting for farmers willing to grow jatropha shrub whose nut yields bio-fuel-useful oil.
I'm going to jump on my transport orange box here and say that what the Philippines needs, or for that matter Davao, is not an alternative form of fuel but rather an alternative form of transport.
Look at the early evening television news last Friday. Traffic chaos caused by stalled multicab PUJs after a sudden and heavy downpour.
A multicab engine is under the floor, almost shaving the tarmac. Anything more than a heavy dew and they stop and yet multicabs are at the moment the city's preferred method of public transport.
We're going down the wrong road -- meekly accepting that the city will be jammed with more and more gas-driven vehicles - witness the franchises handed out -- rather than investing in citywide clean and green public transport.
Someone take note -- the easy oil is running out, new supplies are deeper and more contaminated and more difficult to get at.
Combustion engines of any sort -- gas, gas/diesel, fancy biofuels -- will become prohibitively expensive to operate and they are not the way forward. Electricity is.
Electricity derived from geothermal sources.
We're forever hearing about how the Philippines sits on the Ring of Fire. We've seen the power of Pinatubo and Mayon erupting so why don't we utilize that heat and power?
Drill more holes. Pump down water. Create steam to drive turbines to generate electricity. It's clean, almost free and just about infinitely renewable.
Ignore the faux-greenies who rant about geothermal projects destroying the environment or ruining ecosystems. Ask them if they drive a car. Ask them what they, personally, are doing to save the world. Chances are it'll be naught but shout. (What am I doing? Ask covington@email.com)
Lastly and I loved the item reporting that the cost of rice is on the drop just as incoming presidential press secretary Jesus Dureza flies in "because the President sent me to check the situation." A coincidence or what?
