BY SHAY CULLEN
THE PHILIPPINES is coal-dependent with as many as 28 coal-fired power plants currently operating throughout the Philippines, with total installed capacity of 9.88 gigawatts. The energy department has approved another 22 coal plants. The electricity to be generated by coal will be 53 percent by 2030. Environmental groups are protesting these plans. Philippine corporations have to get into a bed of bribery with high government officials to get approval for the energy coal projects.
Geothermal and hydro-power from dams make up the other source of energy. The present government wants to give full foreign ownership of new geothermal plants to foreign companies from Russia and China but local opposition is growing. However, the solar and wind sector is almost non-existent. The Philippine government will have no good news for the COP26 conference.
Global warming continues hotter than ever as a result. Studies show that there is more C02 in the atmosphere, not less, in 2020.To keep the global temperature at 1.5 degrees and avoid disasters, the earth needs a reduction in greenhouse gases of 55 percent and so far, the pledges of 120 nations add up to only 7.5 percent cuts. The promises and pledges to cut the emissions would need to increase seven times to save the planet from the point of no return by 2030. The politicians and corporations are successfully persuading the public with lies and fake news that their pledges and promises are true. The facts speak otherwise. President Joe Biden seems more honest. He is proposing strong legislation to support industry to change to renewable energy- wind and solar- not promises.
A case in point in the US where Senator Manchin has blocked the ambitious legislation of President Biden to change to renewable energy production and impose fines on those industries that release methane into the atmosphere. Senator Manchin’s vote for Biden’s legislation is vital. He is holding back because the biggest coal industry in his state of West Virginia gets big subsidies and he himself earns US$500,000 a year from his personal investment in coal.
The third catastrophe is the ignorance, blindness and apathy and indifference of the public worldwide to the truth of climate change. Many stupidly allow it to happen without protest or demanding to know how and why.
This indifference allows multinational corporations like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google, the telecommunication companies and the fossil fuel corporations to rise to great power and their platforms control the data, the news feeds and distort and manipulate the public. The message of COP26 will be controlled by them and they can continue to perpetuate their lies that there is no real danger to the planet that they cannot control. They will continue to rake in trillions of dollars in profit and rip off the people. How do they do it?
As the famous Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was executed for opposing Hitler said, the general public can be very stupid. They give up their independence and do not know it but each person talks “. . . with slogans, catch words, and the like that have taken possession of him, he is under a spell, blinded, misused and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool. . . ”
So it seems in the Philippines and much of the world today as we travel towards climate catastrophe carried on the flood waters of ignorance where too many people are mindless tools of the corporate powers that rule our consumer-dominated lives. (preda.org)/PN
