Cancer is growth, too
Cancer is growth, too
Updated 09:28pm (Mla time) Jan 04, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the January 5, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
IN 2001, a United Nations panel of hundreds of scientists released two reports on global warming. The first is the Working Group 1 Report on the scientific basis of climate change. That is no longer debatable, it says. "Emissions of greenhouse gases due to human activities continue to alter the atmosphere in ways that are expected to affect the climate." This has caused sea levels and sea temperatures to rise and reduced the planet's ice cover. "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities." The report predicts that the earth's temperature could rise by 3 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century, the most rapid heating in 10 millennia.
The second report, "Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability" looks at the effects of global warming. The rising temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels, it says, could precipitate irreversible climate changes, including altered ocean currents, slowed circulation of warm water in the North Atlantic, and the crumbling of the mountain glaciers and Greenland ice sheet. The results are savage floods, disrupted water supplies, droughts, violent storms and the spread of cholera and malaria. The poor countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America will bear the brunt of these changes, which would further widen the gap between the world's rich and poor. "Most of the earth's people will be on the losing side."
Over the last century, the earth's temperature has risen by 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit, faster than the last 1,000 years combined. The 1990s were the hottest decade in those same 1,000 years. If temperatures should rise over this century to the extent the UN experts warn, all life on this planet would be threatened.
You look at the "natural" disasters that have hit the globe last year, including four hurricanes in Florida, in addition to the floods, droughts, extreme cold and snow in some countries, cyclones, earthquakes, landslides and tsunami that I mentioned last Monday, and you would be hard put not to believe it. In fact, since scientists like to say things with caution, they may be a little late in their timetable. Doubtless, it remains arguable if the earthquake and tsunami that hit Indonesia and several Southeast Asian and South Asian countries are directly related to global warming, but the collective mayhem over the last year culminating in that must give us pause and wonder if our sojourn in this planet has not become a lot more tenuous these days.
I do not know why Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo should say the tsunami that engulfed several Asian countries should make us more attractive as a tourist destination. It is not only a coarse thing to say, it is also a ridiculous one. Why should Boracay and the other beaches of this country be safer? If global warming causes the polar ice caps to melt and the sea levels to rise, no beach anywhere in the world will be safe. Indeed, archipelagos should be even worse off than others.
Fortunately, the UN studies say that there is still time to halt the earth's rapid decline. But it requires political will, the kind that at the very least sees the economic and social costs of environmental degradation. Those costs have never figured in the reckoning of various countries as they plunge headlong into growth, or economic survival. The deaths of 5,000 or so Filipinos in Ormoc have never greatly mattered in economic calculation. Neither have the deaths of Indians, Sri Lankans, Indonesians from forest denudation and the poisoning of the air and sea.
At least until last December. If the earthquake and tsunami have served any useful purpose, despite their grimness, it is to sound a wake-up call to all humanity about the unacceptable costs of killing the earth to live. It is a contradiction in terms.
Closer to home, I don't know why the storms of last December shouldn't compel us to re-evaluate the wisdom of murdering Nature to survive. What made the effects of those storms particularly harsh was the logging out of the forests in those areas, made perfectly legal by the timber licenses the DENR gave to logging companies. People died for the most part because logs and not just mud tumbled on to them. To this day, I don't know why we keep blaming "illegal logging" for the mayhem, and refuse to punish the culprits.
Indeed, to this day, I don't know why we're not taking to the streets to protest the Supreme Court's decision to open mining to foreign investors. That is shooting ourselves in the head, given the devastating effects of mining-open-pit mining in particular-on local communities since the days of Marcopper. "But we have to grow" is the argument used to justify it; we are a poor country. Well, poverty is not an excuse to commit suicide. That growth carries with it a very steep price in terms of human lives and the welfare of communities, and in terms of the continuing livability of the various places of this country. I am tempted to suggest that we allow mining companies-as well as logging firms-to operate with impunity only on condition that their owners and managers and their families live in the very areas they operate on.
Cancer is growth, too, in case we forget. It is runaway growth of cells in one part of the body, causing the entire body to degenerate. And the owner of the body to experience excruciating pain. The way this country and the globe are reeling from the impact of "natural disasters," you wonder if the kind of growth we have been pursuing is not of the cancerous variety.
The UN studies remain hopeful we can still do something to halt our march to apocalypse, but it also says one other thing: That's not something we can put off for tomorrow, that is something we must do today.
Updated 09:28pm (Mla time) Jan 04, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the January 5, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
IN 2001, a United Nations panel of hundreds of scientists released two reports on global warming. The first is the Working Group 1 Report on the scientific basis of climate change. That is no longer debatable, it says. "Emissions of greenhouse gases due to human activities continue to alter the atmosphere in ways that are expected to affect the climate." This has caused sea levels and sea temperatures to rise and reduced the planet's ice cover. "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities." The report predicts that the earth's temperature could rise by 3 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century, the most rapid heating in 10 millennia.
The second report, "Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability" looks at the effects of global warming. The rising temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels, it says, could precipitate irreversible climate changes, including altered ocean currents, slowed circulation of warm water in the North Atlantic, and the crumbling of the mountain glaciers and Greenland ice sheet. The results are savage floods, disrupted water supplies, droughts, violent storms and the spread of cholera and malaria. The poor countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America will bear the brunt of these changes, which would further widen the gap between the world's rich and poor. "Most of the earth's people will be on the losing side."
Over the last century, the earth's temperature has risen by 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit, faster than the last 1,000 years combined. The 1990s were the hottest decade in those same 1,000 years. If temperatures should rise over this century to the extent the UN experts warn, all life on this planet would be threatened.
You look at the "natural" disasters that have hit the globe last year, including four hurricanes in Florida, in addition to the floods, droughts, extreme cold and snow in some countries, cyclones, earthquakes, landslides and tsunami that I mentioned last Monday, and you would be hard put not to believe it. In fact, since scientists like to say things with caution, they may be a little late in their timetable. Doubtless, it remains arguable if the earthquake and tsunami that hit Indonesia and several Southeast Asian and South Asian countries are directly related to global warming, but the collective mayhem over the last year culminating in that must give us pause and wonder if our sojourn in this planet has not become a lot more tenuous these days.
I do not know why Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo should say the tsunami that engulfed several Asian countries should make us more attractive as a tourist destination. It is not only a coarse thing to say, it is also a ridiculous one. Why should Boracay and the other beaches of this country be safer? If global warming causes the polar ice caps to melt and the sea levels to rise, no beach anywhere in the world will be safe. Indeed, archipelagos should be even worse off than others.
Fortunately, the UN studies say that there is still time to halt the earth's rapid decline. But it requires political will, the kind that at the very least sees the economic and social costs of environmental degradation. Those costs have never figured in the reckoning of various countries as they plunge headlong into growth, or economic survival. The deaths of 5,000 or so Filipinos in Ormoc have never greatly mattered in economic calculation. Neither have the deaths of Indians, Sri Lankans, Indonesians from forest denudation and the poisoning of the air and sea.
At least until last December. If the earthquake and tsunami have served any useful purpose, despite their grimness, it is to sound a wake-up call to all humanity about the unacceptable costs of killing the earth to live. It is a contradiction in terms.
Closer to home, I don't know why the storms of last December shouldn't compel us to re-evaluate the wisdom of murdering Nature to survive. What made the effects of those storms particularly harsh was the logging out of the forests in those areas, made perfectly legal by the timber licenses the DENR gave to logging companies. People died for the most part because logs and not just mud tumbled on to them. To this day, I don't know why we keep blaming "illegal logging" for the mayhem, and refuse to punish the culprits.
Indeed, to this day, I don't know why we're not taking to the streets to protest the Supreme Court's decision to open mining to foreign investors. That is shooting ourselves in the head, given the devastating effects of mining-open-pit mining in particular-on local communities since the days of Marcopper. "But we have to grow" is the argument used to justify it; we are a poor country. Well, poverty is not an excuse to commit suicide. That growth carries with it a very steep price in terms of human lives and the welfare of communities, and in terms of the continuing livability of the various places of this country. I am tempted to suggest that we allow mining companies-as well as logging firms-to operate with impunity only on condition that their owners and managers and their families live in the very areas they operate on.
Cancer is growth, too, in case we forget. It is runaway growth of cells in one part of the body, causing the entire body to degenerate. And the owner of the body to experience excruciating pain. The way this country and the globe are reeling from the impact of "natural disasters," you wonder if the kind of growth we have been pursuing is not of the cancerous variety.
The UN studies remain hopeful we can still do something to halt our march to apocalypse, but it also says one other thing: That's not something we can put off for tomorrow, that is something we must do today.
posted by Dante at 12:00 AM
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