Our battle cry: Remember ‘Yolanda’

Eastern Visayas is still reeling from the devastation wrought by Supertyphoon “Yolanda” (aka “Haiyan”), the strongest on record.

Yolanda destroyed one-third of our country’s rice production, among other things, and has affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos, many of whose houses and properties were washed away. The death toll has breached the 6,000 mark.

Rehabilitation and reconstruction of the ravaged region will take years.

Yolanda made global news at the same time that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was holding its climate change conference in Warsaw.

As expected, the Conference of Parties (COP) 19 was disappointing, with the 195 member-countries painfully agreeing to make a “contribution,” instead of a robust “commitment,” to combating climate change. The aim is still to reach a stronger agreement in Paris in 2015. Imagine what else can happen in the two-year waiting period!

“What makes this depressing is that the world could probably eliminate the risk of catastrophic outcomes at limited cost, provided it had acted quickly, effectively and in concert,” rued Martin Wolf of The Financial Times.

In his article, “The Climate Casino,” Prof. William Nordhaus of Yale University Press

cited about a dozen climate economists arguing that the cost of limiting the increase of global temperature to 2 degrees Centigrade would be just 1.5 percent of global output, provided the right actions were taken.

Skeptics argue with uncertainty, as if the right thing to do is to do nothing.

Meanwhile, Wolf said, “A particularly important aspect of that uncertainty is the tipping point. We know that the earth’s climate has changed sharply in the past. It is possible that some insufficiently understood process could tip the world into another and perhaps irreversible state. The collapse of large ice sheets is such a possibility; another is large changes in ocean circulation.”

The greenhouse effect is basic science. Emissions have risen rapidly. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are now more than 400 ppm (parts per million), which is 50 percent higher than before the Industrial Revolution.

The message delivered by Yolanda should have knocked some sense into the COP 19 members. The message was to reduce greenhouse gases, or face more devastating storms.

If a Yolanda-like storm hit Warsaw or New York, it would have sent a stronger message: Act NOW. Why wait for COP 21 in Paris in 2015? It makes no sense. We do not have the luxury of time.

How many more people need to die? How many more countries need to be victimized by climatic catastrophes?

The Arctic ice is melting fast. The oceans are changing, in fact slowly dying, due to acidification. Should this imbalance continue, our ecosystems will lose their ability to replenish and sustain the earth.

We must act now in our own ways and mitigate emissions, protect our carbon sinks and go on renewable energy. We need more mangroves, swamps and coastal forests.

Can’t we follow Germany’s lead by going fully renewable before 2050?

Our battle cry: Remember Yolanda.

—ANTONIO M. CLAPAROLS, president,

Ecological Society of the Philippines