I CONGRATULATE Leonardo DiCaprio for dedicating his acceptance speech of the Oscar best actor award to all of us, the global citizens. DiCaprio said that “making ‘The Revenant’ was about man’s relationship to the natural world. A world that we collectively felt in 2015 as the hottest year in recorded history. Our production needed to move to the southern tip of this planet just to be able to find snow.”
This speech should resonate with Negrenses too. Because of El Niño, the dry spell has damaged of at least P239 million in crops and livestock in Negros Occidental.
Direly affected are nine cities and municipalities have recorded swine, goat, carabao, cattle, free-range chicken, fattening, and game fowl losses. Moreover, the Office of the Provincial Agriculturist of Negros Occidental linked rat pest infestation to changes in climatic condition, particularly as after-effects of the persisting dry spell brought by El Niño.
Like Biblical scourges, Negrense farmers could expect insects and pest infestations such as army worms, locusts, and rice black bugs also arise after a long dry spell. I have seen locust infestation in Murcia in 1999. Scenes in the movie The Ten Commandments failed to do justice to the real thing.
Thank you, Leo, for emphasizing climate change in the Oscars. A committed environmental activist, he added: “Climate change is real, it is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating.”
May President Aquino and other political leaders who want to promote coal-fired plants in this country heed the words of the 2016 Best Actor: “We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters, but who speak for all of humanity, for the indigenous people of the world, for the billions and billions of underprivileged people out there who would be most affected by this.”
Echoed Jenny Beavan, winner of the best costume design Oscar for “Mad Max: Fury Road,” who said on receiving her award: “It could be horribly prophetic, Mad Max—if we’re not kinder to each other, and if we don’t stop polluting our atmosphere ... it could happen.”
DiCaprio finally said, “For our children’s children, and for those people out there whose voices have been drowned out by the politics of greed ... Let us not take this planet for granted. I do not take tonight for granted.”
A non-practicing Roman Catholic, DiCaprio echoed Pope Francis who strongly earlier condemned the craving for material gains and power, telling world leaders gathered last year at the United Nations that greed is destroying the Earth’s resources and aggravating poverty. The Pope called on government leaders to fight human trafficking, boost education for girls, and end the destruction of biodiversity which he warned is threatening the “very existence of the human species.”
(bqsanc@yahoomail.com)