JUDGING from TV footages of rehabilitation work being done, is Boracay Island really ready for reopening on Friday the 26th? Assuming “yes” to be the answer, then this writer would hope to see an island different from what I had described in past columns. Here are excerpts of one of those I wrote in July 2014:
“The more pressing problem of the so-called island paradise is its substandard road network that has not caught up with modernization. The roads are so narrow that drivers of four-wheel vehicles meeting from opposite directions have to drive really slowly to avoid collision. Each rainfall results in flooding, exacerbated by the clogged drainage system.
“In contrast, the privately-owned resort hotels and restaurants look majestic.
“But what the visitors really long for are natural sceneries which are still around but no longer environmentally friendly. As published on the front page of this paper recently, flood water coming from the streets directly flows down to the sea.
“Boracay is paradise lost.”
This is no longer all about Boracay, however. The paradise we prefer does not restrict itself to a tourist spot but to a self-sustaining society reminiscent of one described in the Bible.
Adam and Eve did not have to apply artificial fertilizer to tend their orchard. Theirs was a far cry from the polluted environment that we endure today.
It is no doubt in the hope of regaining that lost Paradise that concerned farmers today practice organic farming. We would like to think that we have learned from past mistakes.
Unfortunately, some of us retain bad habits. We always see people spitting or throwing rubbish on the street. Despite antismoking ordinances, smokers still smoke in public.
A domestic helper returning from Hong Kong told us that on her first day there, she found no garbage on the streets. Her employer explained that littering was punishable by a fine of one thousand HK dollars.
It was only during a Sunday stroll at Central Park, the favorite pasyalan or hangout of a thousand Filipina domestic helpers, that she saw the site strewn with chicken bones, candy wrappers and plastic pouches. Nearby were two Hong Kong cops who pretended unaware.
What a pity that we are capable of violating another nation’s environmental law!
Environmental sanitation is a means to an end: to protect us from harmful consequences. And yet we do not learn from experience. How many times have we seen on TV that scene of garbage floating on knee-deep flood and knocking on a door with a voice booming, “Ang basurang itinapon mo ay babalik sa’yo”?
The future of this generation and future generations will largely depend on how we take care of the ecosystem that is now in disarray due to accumulated mistakes of many generations. It is now up to us to make corrections.
There are technological solutions to pollution without junking known pollutants. Today we don’t have to junk coal. Thanks to the so-called “clean-coal technology” that now runs today’s coal-fired power plant traps carbon and other pollutants.
Unfortunately, the government appears disinterested in implementing environmental reforms that could diminish tax collection. I remember that during the time of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, she personally received a Japan-assembled unit of Honda Civic Hybrid from donor company Honda Philippines. That unit had two engines: one gas-run and the other battery-powered. But then … no gas, no fuel taxes.
Alas, where conflict between profitability and practicality exists, the former gets the grease. (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
