LET US go back to an ancient worldview when the earth was seen as a mother, a fertile giver of life. Nature – the forest, soil, and sea – was endowed with diversity, and mortals were subordinate to it. The speech in 1848 attributed to Chief Seatlle of the Susquamish tribe captures this high reverence to nature.
“How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? Every part of this Earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. The sap which courses through the trees carries the memories of the red man. This we know: the earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites our family. All things are connected.”
However, something has gone very wrong somewhere and somehow. The Judeo-Christian tradition introduced a radically different concept. The earth was the creation of a monotheistic God, who, after shaping it, ordered its inhabitants in the words of Genesis: “Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the foul of the air and over every living thing that moved upon the earth.”
The idea of dominion could be the root of a development paradigm that has sacrificed mother earth to the altar of greed and profit called neo-liberal capitalism, so horrible that is gearing towards the end of civilization.
Yes, despite the science of denials, climate change saw the continuous destruction of the ozone layer, the acidification of the oceans, the rising of the sea level, the melting of the 386-meter high iceberg in the Artic and the Antarctic which is twice as the area of Europe at the rate of one thousand hectares daily, the non-stop extinction of the species and as the earth warms, insect bites are becoming more rabid and deadly.
It is predicted that there will be pestilence in Bhopal and the inhabitants must seek refuge in Calcutta but Calcutta will be under water when that time comes.
It has been the subject of studies that for every one degree Celsius increase in temperature, there will be a corresponding 10 percent decrease in food production. John biblical Revelation of the coming of the four horsemen of Apocalypse – famine, pestilence, war and death – seems to be near.
Yes. We are now on the 19th year of the 21st century but we are not anymore sure if we can reach the 22nd century which is only 81 years from now. It is predicted that as the earth warms continuously, sea level will rise to more than two meters, meaning, that the 7,100 islands in the Philippines will just become 3,000 islands. In fact, the Philippines is the 3rd hardest hit country of climate change in the world.
But nothing is being done. It is business as usual. No way will big corporation lower down the use of fossil fuel as these global corporations are raking five trillion dollars every year from the use of these fuel. That means, they are earning ten million dollars every minute. Worse, they are continuously establishing coal-fired power plants raking as much as two trillion dollars yearly. In Mindanao alone, some eight coal-fired power plants are scheduled to be established this year up to next year.
Don’t they know that an average coal-fired power plant will emit one million five hundred tons of carbon dioxide yearly and some one hundred fifty tons of sulfuric oxide annually.
Despite all the fears and warnings on climate change and violent extremism, nothing is being done. These pressing issues are not ever discussed by any of the candidates as election time approaches. Indeed, the politicians have just been reduced to self-gratification machines and elections are just an exercise in futility.