Courtesy: Climate Adaptation Platform
MALACAÑAN PALACE, Manila — Echoing the statement of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk on climate change sparking human rights emergencies in numerous countries, Climate Change Commissioner Albert Dela Cruz Sr. has expressed alarm over the complacency of most Filipinos in responding to the impacts of the global climate phenomenon.
At the UN Human Rights Council, the rights chief decried widespread misinformation that is sowing chaos and confusion to deny the reality of the situation even as he pointed to recent examples of the “environmental horror that is our global planetary crisis” that includes drought, super typhoons, flooding and food shortages in several countries.
“The spiraling damage is a human rights emergency for all of us. Climate change is pushing millions of people into famine. It is destroying hopes, opportunities, homes and lives. In recent months, urgent warnings have become lethal realities again and again all around the world,” Turk had described in his message.
In reaction, Commissioner Dela Cruz stressed that “people no longer need to be warned but should instead take immediate action to arrest the fast approach of the climate crisis that hints on a dystopian future and the possible extinction of the human race.”
“Actually, we are already feeling the impacts of the global warming and we see it in the rising sea level that cause floods and the extreme increase in global temperatures that are causing drought in many regions, including the Philippines,” the climate official added.
Dela Cruz noted that there is still prevailing complacency even as he recalled that after the Group of 20 (G20) forum backed the goal of tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030, it failed to commit to a phase-out of fossil fuels.
“At a time when the ravages of climate change are forcing more and more people to poverty and hunger, I am shocked by the nonchalance seen toward surging numbers of climate-induced deaths,” he concluded.
