IN AN emphatic statement, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Gutierres announced that our planet is now entering the global boiling point, from global warming as temperatures rise to unprecedented high especially July this year.
This is an alarming situation but we need no extra proof to know that indeed the heat we have experienced, and continues to experience is becoming unbearable especially for the sickly and weak among us.
The younger ones are most likely to suffer from various diseases especially asthma and severe colds and pain and no palliatives can ease the suffering they encounter.
Thus declared Gutierres: Humanity is in the hot seat. Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning. The era of global warming has ended, the era of global boiling has arrived. The air is unbearable. The heat is unbearable. And the level of fossil fuel profits and climate inaction is unacceptable.
Here in the Philippines, figures of the recorded temperatures are simply mind-boggling: 60 degrees Celsius in Casiguran, Aurora; 45 degrees Celsius in Calapan, Oriental Mindoro, Tuguegarao and NAIA in Pasay-43 degrees Celsius and other areas registered high temperature ratings. Whew!
Why, we ask, would this be (hot, very hot) when we experience heavy rainfall and strong winds? Where do these high temperature ratings come from?
The data we all need are well-known to us. Let us therefore savor and appreciate these in our daily battle against the ill effects of climate change. Either we swim or sink and perish.
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In sum, we are in a frantic race toward solving the hazardous effect of global boiling or else…
The Philippines is one of the most vulnerable to climate change risks, a so-called carbon sink country.
Gutierres advises that we should unite and act now before it becomes too late.
There seems to be no other way.