Love the environment as you love your lover

Today, Valentine’s Day, love not only your spouse and/or your significant other but also the environment. Your life and happiness—and theirs, too—depend on it. You can change your significant other and even your spouse, but not the environment we all live in. We are all stuck with it.

How can you live happily when you can’t breathe clean air, when you are trapped in a concrete jungle full of vehicles emitting noxious gases? Which is why I am happy that environment crusader and Ramon Magsaysay awardee Antonio Oposa is preparing to file a petition for the issuance of a “writ of kalikasan” by the Supreme Court.

Oposa’s petition is for the government to devote half of all roads to an efficient and affordable transportation system and the other half for wide sidewalks, bike lanes and urban gardens.

By urban gardens, I presume he means parks—which are almost nonexistent in Metro Manila—apart from the vegetable and flower gardens in the back and front yards of homes. I wish he would also include in his petition the issuance of an order for local government units to set aside land for parks.

In other countries, governments buy privately-owned land for development as parks. In the Philippines, government-owned land is sold to private developers for the purpose of building more concrete jungles. A notorious example: What remains of the North Triangle in Quezon City, originally planned to be the city’s central park, is being turned over to Ayala Land (with no public bidding), which will build more malls and office and commercial buildings on it. Another example: The lot of the former Food Terminal Inc. in Taguig City will be bid out to land developers that will transform it into still another concrete jungle. That FTI lot and the North Triangle area are the last two chances of Metro Manila to have a central park.

Even our newest and “most modern city,” Bonifacio Global City, lacks a big park. If you fly over Metro Manila, you will see nothing but tin roofs and kilometer after kilometer of concrete. The only green spot you will see is Rizal Park in Manila and the University of the Philippines campus in Diliman, which, by the way, is also in peril. If Ayala Land is not stopped, it will build more malls in what remains of the campus. It has already succeeded in building malls on UP’s Commonwealth Avenue and Katipunan Avenue campuses.

Also in peril are the Ninoy Aquino Nature Center, the Veterans’ Memorial Medical Center and its pocket golf course, and the compound of the Philippine Children’s Hospital, all in Quezon City.

When Ayala Land runs out of land, it will cast covetous eyes on these properties. Already, the QC government has said that the Aquino Nature Center should be turned over to it “for development.” Ha, ha, ha, what development? Look at how it has “developed” the Quezon Memorial Park. That area has ceased to be a park and is now full of concrete structures. The grass under the trees where families used to picnic have been covered with concrete and turned into parking lots. Stores of all sorts now occupy most of the park. The stores are just a camouflage for dwelling places of squatters.

At a briefing last Wednesday at the Lung Center of the Philippines, Oposa said the objective of the petition for a writ of kalikasan is to reduce air pollution and the emission of heat-trapping gases by motor vehicles. It was noted in the briefing that almost 80 percent of air pollution in Metro Manila comes from motor vehicles.

“One way to address this, given the worsening traffic situation,” said Director Juan Miguel Cuna of the Environmental Management

Bureau, “is to lessen the number of vehicles plying the roads. Now it’s a matter of ways we can accomplish this.”

One way, of course, is to entice people to walk more by widening sidewalks, clearing these of obstructions like vendors and parked vehicles, and planting shade trees. In short, make walking pleasurable.

Which leads me to Peter Wallace’s column in yesterday’s Inquirer. All agencies concerned with roads, motor vehicles and traffic should read it. It has very sensible observations and suggestions.

One suggestion to ease traffic jams is to take half of the buses off Edsa. Wallace cites a study by the University of the Philippines and the Japan International Cooperation Agency confirming the wisdom of this move.

“Why on earth hasn’t it been done?” Wallace writes. “The buses are half or less full, so half of them gone will disadvantage no commuter… Who are we trying to look after, the public in millions or the bus owners in tens? And don’t give me nonsense about franchises and things, I’m sure it can be done. Half of the buses were probably fraudulently acquired anyway…”

In many previous columns, I have written similar comments. Since the buses are always almost empty, even during rush hours, how do they survive? I asked. They must be overcharging the few passengers they have, I surmised. The few passengers are paying for all the empty seats. Otherwise, the bus companies would have gone bankrupt a long time ago.

In the old days, you could always get a franchise from the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board if the price is right. Now it is stuck with so many franchises issued and making life hell on the streets. Its problem now is how to cancel the franchises.

Easy. Cancel the franchises—not just suspend, as it is doing now—of bus companies whose units are involved in serious or many minor accidents. The rule should be, as in baseball, three accidents and you’re out. That will quickly reduce the number of running coffins with reckless drivers on the roads.