As I See It
Philippines’ bit for Earth Day: massacre of 13,000 trees
By Neal Cruz
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:52:00 04/23/2008
Filed Under: Environmental Issues, Environmental Politics, Climate Change
Tuesday was Earth Day, designated by the United Nations for the whole world to try to save the Earth. If you have not read the many articles and stories and has not seen the Nobel Prize-winning documentary by former US vice president Al Gore on global warming, you must be living in a cave. So to bring you up to date, global warming means that the overall temperature of the earth will rise and the polar ice caps will melt and all that melted water will make the ocean levels rise by a few meters and the low-lying islands will be submerged.
For the Philippines, that means its 7,000 islands will be reduced to perhaps 1,000. The Hundred Islands in Pangasinan province will thenceforth be Zero Island, and the celebrated Boracay Island will be no more, something that can be compared to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah or the sinking of the city of Atlantis. Navotas town, Malabon City, Valenzuela City and the reclamation area in Manila and Pasay City will be swamped. The seas will engulf the fishing villages along the shorelines and even great cities beside the sea like Manhattan will partly go under.
River deltas that are at present very good rice farming areas will be permanently submerged so that they cannot be planted to rice anymore. That means the world’s harvests of rice will be even less, and you know what that means to rice-eating Filipinos.
Why is Earth warming up? Because greenhouse gases in the stratosphere trap the sun’s rays so that they cannot bounce back up from Earth. That makes the earth’s temperature rise causing the polar ice caps to melt, etc., etc.
What are greenhouse gases? They are the accumulation of carbon dioxide that we exhale, that factories belch out of their chimneys, that vehicles spew out of their exhaust pipes, that bonfires and millions of cooking fires emit, that “kaingin” [slash-and-burn farming] and big forest fires release into the air, etc. Wherever there is fire there is carbon dioxide.
What is the antidote to carbon dioxide? Oxygen. Where does oxygen come from? Mostly from plants and trees. They absorb the carbon dioxide and, through photosynthesis, manufacture oxygen. We take in oxygen for our bodies and exhale carbon dioxide, a waste product. Without oxygen, we cannot survive.
In the early days, when there were many forests and few factories and vehicles, carbon dioxide was no problem. With industrialization and the rise of factories, and as more and more forests are mowed down, the balance between oxygen and carbon dioxide have begun to reverse. The trees can no longer absorb the excess carbon dioxide. And so, the greenhouse gases. And global warming.
The scenario of rising seas and drowned islands that I narrated is no science fiction. It is reality. It will surely happen if the earth continues to warm up.
Fortunately, we can still do something to avert global warming. How? By producing more oxygen and reducing carbon dioxide. How can we do that? By planting more trees so that they can absorb more carbon dioxide and produce more oxygen. And of course by reducing the emission of carbon dioxide.
And this has to be done on a massive scale, by the whole world. It cannot be done by a few communities or by a few countries. One country cannot be planting trees while another is cutting down theirs and putting up more factories. They will be working at cross purposes.
That is the reason for Earth Day, to awaken the whole world to the danger facing us and to show it what it can do to avert disaster for all of us. That everybody must cooperate. It is like everybody must help row a sinking boat towards shore as fast as possible so it would get there before it sinks and everybody on board drowns.
So what is the Philippines doing to help prevent global warming and save the world? Two days before Earth Day, it was reported that the government wants to massacre 13,000 trees (that’s 13,000) in Camp John Hay in Baguio City, one of the few beautiful places left in the Philippines because of its forested areas. The Philippine Economic Zone Authority, which leases 65,253 square meters of John Hay from the Bases Conversion Development Authority (BCDA), wants to mow down the trees for expanding a foreign-owned factory. As in the Subic Freeport, where trees in a rainforest were cut down to accommodate high-rise condominiums of a Korean shipbuilder, the reason being given is that it is for a project of an investor. Our dwindling environment is being sacrificed on the altar of investors.
There are millions of hectares of empty land here where many factories can be put up. Why on earth do they want to put one where there is a growing forest? Are we this hungry for foreign investment that we will sacrifice our environment for a fistful of dollars?
Kawawa naman tayo.Our people have to go to foreign countries to work as domestics, bar girls, prostitutes, laborers, waiters, drivers or do other menial jobs. Here at home, foreigners ravage our environment because they are “investors.” Don’t we have any self-respect left?
Fortunately, we have an environment secretary who still has some left. Last Monday at the Kapihan sa Manila forum, Environment Secretary Lito Atienza said he would not allow the massacre of thousands of trees in Camp John Hay or anywhere else. Also fortunately, we have a law that requires anybody, Filipino or foreigner, to get an environment compliance certificate from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) before he can cut down trees. And we have a DENR secretary who is not blinded by investment and knows his job is to preserve our precious environment. Nature, after all, can bring in more income and jobs from tourism than factories can.
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