BY SHAY CULLEN
GLOBAL warming is evaporating lakes, reservoirs and melting the glaciers in the mountains around the world. There is less water than ever before for irrigation to grow food. Then, there is the prolonged drought. The climate change has changed the rain fall. More hunger and death and the young people migrate north towards water, jobs and food.
If people are racist and mean, they don’t like to give them a welcome and are angry with the new arrivals. The rich countries may have only themselves to blame for this poverty. They have continually exploited poor countries during colonial and neo-colonial era to the present. Africa is being hit hardest of all.
Millions of people are going hungry and children are the first to die from malnutrition because the greedy tycoons and political cronies are exploiting the natural resources and destroying the Amazon and the remaining African rainforests. Even in the Philippines, there is still illegal logging in the remaining three percent of rain forests. In 1903, there was 70 percent forest cover in the Philippines. The top one percent of the international mega rich tycoons and industrial barons are almost twice as rich as they were five years ago.
For us to survive, we have to reduce global warming and the loss of water. We have to change and do good. One easy thing is to plant trees anywhere and everywhere. When we visit the province, we could bring gifts of fruit tree saplings from a nursery at least two years old and plant them in the home province. Imagine, if every Filipino did that, then a million trees would be planted every year. That will help reduce CO2 and help reduce global warming.
Development aid should focus on reforestation, securing and restoring the rain forests and thus improving water resources and managing them to their maximum benefit. Urban communities need more recycling water plants, turning wastewater into clean water.
The climate change disasters facing the planet are most serious than at any time in the history of the earth. So many of us live without discipline, mindfulness, idiotic, useless lives, living a life-style that is destroying the environment by burning coal, oil and gas when we could use the sun, wind and geothermal and wave or tide power to generate electricity. Hopefully, the scientists will develop fusion power plants to solve the problem.
We can plant our trees (I plant 2,000 mango saplings every year with the indigenous Aeta people). We can awaken concern for the environment and encourage people to act in a good responsible way and teach by example, especially the young. People should bring their children or grandchildren with them when they go to plant their tree saplings or give them to the indigenous Aeta people to plant and improve their ancestral lands. (preda.org)/PN
