Saturday, November 18, 2006 Peña: Clean Air Month By Rox Peña E-ssue
NOVEMBER is designated as Clean Air Month through Presidential Proclamation 1109 signed by former President Fidel Ramos in 1997. Part of the month-long celebration this year is the "Bantay Tambutso sa Eskwela" campaign by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) which will ban the entry of smoke belching vehicles into school premises.
The campaign is part of the DENR's "Linis Hangin Program" which has three components: the "Bantay Tambutso" which addresses vehicle emissions, "Bantay Tsimineya" which focuses on industrial sources of pollution and "Bantay Sunog-Basura" which tackles air pollution coming from open burning of garbage.
I suggest that the Department of Health (DOH) and local government units (LGUs) join the Clean Air Month celebration by enforcing No-smoking ordinances. I observed that local laws on smoking are not enforced strictly to the detriment of non-smoking citizens.
Lights...Camera...Pollute!
Here's a showbiz scoop. In the five-country Los Angeles region in California, the film and television industry and allied activities pollute the air more than the aerospace manufacturing, apparel, hotels and semi-conductor manufacturing industries.
This is the result of a two-year study released by the University of California.
The air-polluting activities are special effects explosions, idling vehicles and teams of workers building monumental sets. Also considered in the study are indirect sources like diesel generators that powers a movie set and the emissions created by a power plant that provides electricity to a studio.
Some movie outfits though are aware of their impact on the environment and take steps to mitigate it. The makers of the film "The Day After Tomorrow" paid US$200,000 to plant trees and for other measures to offset the carbon dioxide emitted by their vehicles, generators and other machines.
I wonder what California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, an actor, has to say about this.
ASEAN Environment Summit
Air pollution issues, specifically the haze created by the raging forest fires in Indonesia, which has blanketed Singapore and some areas in Malaysia, Thailand and Brunei, was tackled in the 10th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on the environment, which commenced last November 10 in Cebu.
The ASEAN ministers signed a resolution addressing several environmental issues.
Statements pertaining to the haze problem are:
We, the ministers of ASEAN Member Countries responsible for the environment, do hereby:
* Express our serious concern over the recurring trans-boundary haze pollution, which was aggravated by the extended drier weather condition during El Niño years, and resolve to further enhance preventive, monitoring and mitigation efforts to address land and forest fires;
* Commit to continue assisting member countries affected by land and forest fires within the framework of the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution, and for this purpose encourage the remaining member countries to quickly ratify the agreement; and
* Establish the Sub-regional Ministerial Steering Committee consisting of Ministers from the five most affected countries namely Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand to oversee the implementation of concrete actions to address land and forest fires and the resulting transboundary haze pollution.
Indeed, filthy air cannot be confined within the territories of the source. Cooperation among nations is needed to effectively address pollution.
