Extinction and Climate Change Just 16 when she started her advocacy, climate activist Greta Thunberg has mobilized over seven million children across the world to strike, like her, for climate justice. Greta’s message to the world is simple: fine words about the climate are not enough. Share my panic, she says, and take action now. (Photo from KidsRights)
CLIMATE change is the greatest threat affecting our nations and peoples. There is no other problem so global in nature that it requires a united effort, one led by the United Nations. — President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr. at the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, New York.
ONE of the songs I love to sing is the one sung by the American great—trumpeter and vocalist Louis Daniel Armstrong—that describes “what a wonderful world” this planet we call home. And indeed it is.
When we look around, we see beauty all around us. We see the creations of God in their splendor and we feel all is good. We witness God’s hand in everything and witness His greatness in establishing an existence that balances darkness and light, life and death and all other aspects that make up our world.
But our arrogance—not our ignorance—has disrupted this delicate balance, threatening what God has created. Man’s greed has blinded every one of us from the reality that each of God’s creations has a reason for existence and corrupting this because of ambition and selfishness will spell our world’s destruction.
At this year’s United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) held New York City, our beloved President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr. cited that climate change is the greatest threat affecting (the world) and that its effects are uneven and reflect historical injustice. In addition, the former senator and scion of the Marcos family even noted that those who are least responsible (to the problem) suffer the most: “The Philippines, for example, is a net carbon sink, we absorb more carbon dioxide than we emit. And yet, we are the fourth most vulnerable country to the effects of climate change.”
And he further stated that the injustice must be corrected, and those who need to do more must act now. He went on that global leaders should “accept (their) share of responsibility and continue to do (their) part to avert the collective disaster” that would result from mankind’s inequities to nature and ecology.
We recall when Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg spoke to members of the British Parliament in April 2019. The young activist was only 16 then but she aptly described that the (global) climate crisis is actually both the easiest and the hardest issue (the world) ever faced. She explained that “it is the easiest because we know what must do be done, and that is to stop the emissions of greenhouse gases; however, it is also the hardest because our current economics are still totally dependent on burning fossil fuels and thereby destroying ecosystems in order to create everlasting economic growth.”
When I was but a child, I didn’t know about these things—about climate change, about pollution, about extinction of the species and even of the self-destruction of mankind. Growing up in a family where my father was earning more than what was needed and a mother who owned her own row of furnished rooms she rented out to several clients, I lived a life of ease with my elder sister.
I studied in a posh exclusive boys’ school which patron saint was the brother of the patron saint of my sister’s college Saint Scholastica. I really had no worries then.
But we now cannot deny the truth of science any longer and ignore global action that our children and environmentalists are calling for. Today, our schoolchildren, steeped in knowledge and experience of the natural world and knowing the harm being done to our planet, realize what they want to do or be when they grow up and many cry out that they want “to care for Mother Earth.”
Unlike adults, many children have learned the truth that our natural world is under grave threat from climate change and that thousands of species are now near extinction. Humans pollute the atmosphere with carbon dioxide by burning coal and fossil fuels and this in turn is devastating all species.
It is disastrous to the planet, causing severe changes in rainfall in many places like Somalia and Sudan. Millions of impoverished people, women and children, have nothing to eat and are facing famine and death as a result of drought as you read this. The climate change caused by burning fossil fuels non-stop is killing people, too.
If possible, the UN should sequester areas of ocean as non-fishing areas. Shockingly and despite studies and reports of the degradation of our vast oceans, only 15 percent of the world’s seas are being protected at present.
The fact is that ocean levels are rising fast as the polar ice caps are melting quicker than first predicted. Rising ocean levels will quickly inundate low-lying coastal areas as they now cover large parts of South Pacific islands.
In the Philippines, coastal towns and cities, including Manila, will be threatened by drastic year-round floods by 2030 or sooner, making parts of the metropolis a new Italian Venice by 2050. Property values will plunge and investing in gondolas will be a good move.
Sad though it may seem, our children, however, are now seeing and learning faster than us and they realize the danger this poses to flowers and insects, plants and trees, animals, fish and creatures of all kinds. They have learned in school how beneficial, wonderful, beautiful and important the creatures and plants are to each other, supporting and helping each to survive and thrive.
We live in a wonderful world and we must understand and cherish it as children do–before it is destroyed and its beauty disappears.
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