I used to tan at the beach—now I use an umbrella under the sun

I live about five minutes from campus, and like any other student in Metro Manila, I own a mini fan that announces my presence in any room. Even though I could feel the heat reach a new level in the past few months, I rely on my mini fan to combat the humidity because I don’t believe in umbrellas for the sun. The heat is painful and the humidity unbearable, so umbrellas are not only used for the rain but for the sun as well.

Early in 2026, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) again warned that the world is in a climate emergency, as rising global temperatures continue to intensify heat waves, floods, and droughts. Not only Filipinos or people who live in tropical countries complain about the new degree of heat this summer.

Scientists from the World Meteorological Organization and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) said one of the major drivers of the extreme heat is El Niño, a climate pattern marked by unusually warm Pacific Ocean temperatures that disrupt weather systems worldwide.

However, El Niño is a natural climate cycle, meaning it alone does not explain the intensity of today’s heat. Nasa scientists noted that the effects of El Niño are now occurring alongside long-term global warming caused by human activity.

Although scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, UNEP, and Greenpeace agree that climate change can be slowed through collective action—reducing greenhouse gas emissions, transitioning away from fossil fuels, and changing systems that continue to harm the planet—the solutions have long been available; it’s just hard to care when I’m not standing beside melting glaciers, watching polar bears struggle in the Arctic, or fleeing wildfires in Australia. I’ve never witnessed entire towns submerged by floods in Pakistan or seen cracked soils from drought in Ethiopia.

But I’m in Manila, and I can’t walk a block without sweating my makeup off and having a damp shirt. My mini fan no longer helps because the air it lets out is also hot, our electricity bill has gone through the roof, and it feels like my skin is burning whenever I try to tan.

My problems feel small compared to the life-threatening effects of climate change, but its impacts are only taken seriously when felt directly. So, instead of reposting about heat waves, I’ve started asking how I’ve contributed to Manila’s sweltering heat.

It is uncomfortable to admit that, as someone who used to have a nonprofit organization on environmental justice and has written about the waste management problem in the Philippines in college, I stopped segregating my trash properly, I rarely recycle, always sleep with a light on, and take water usage for granted. Climate change is built from the accumulation of these “small” choices, repeated by millions of people every day.

But climate change cannot be reduced to personal responsibility because it is rooted in a far more complex, embedded system in energy production, consumption, and governance. It is about how cities are designed, electricity is generated, and entire economies are built around continuous growth and consumption.

Solution-level gestures that ease guilt still matter, but so does realizing that accountability extends beyond an individual to the systems we uphold and the leaders we choose—even down to electing senators who do not use the heat as an excuse to skip work.

Mikaela Villacorta, [email protected]

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