CLIMATE CHANGE, THIEVES AND THE SMALL MAN

     The signs are all over the ring of fire and beyond: stronger typhoons, more heavy rains, more devastating earthquakes, the melting of the glaciers, the extremely cold and frigid Arctic sea slowly and surely becoming like an ordinary sea. 

     When did climate change start? Technically and philosophically speaking, it began when man discovered fire. Why? Make your deduction with respect to the glaciers, the frozen seas and tundras and the North and South poles and other abodes of virgin snows. Anyway, fire is heat, the needed warmth to melt the glaciers and snows. And the body also creates heat and multiply that heat by the number of individuals in the planet and imagine your contribution to the meltdown.
     After the discovery of fire thousands of years later, came industrialization and the massive use of fossil fuel. Industrialization and the advance of civilization had, and will always have, disastrous consequences, one of which is the destruction of the ozone layer. This region in the stratosphere, the earth's protective shield that absorbs the sun's destructive violent ray is being damaged at a fast rate. When you don't bury but burn your garbage, especially plastics and tires, or drive that car, you contribute to the erosion of the ozone layer.
     In this part of the world, we always rant and wail when disasters strike us like thieves. (And the biggest thieves are still around like the Womanizer, the convicted plunderer, who stole our GSIS and SSS money including the Little Woman with fortified neck and his wealth- hiding Mickey Arroyo who had only P50,000 that ballooned to P100-million during the time of his Mama.)
    Remember Typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng that wrecked havoc in Metro Manila and killed many people? Where were the flood control systems? None. Where have the funds for the construction of these systems go? Thieves. Small thieves. Medium thieves. Big thieves.
     Of course, Mother Nature was the main culprit but it was paying us back for what we did: the destruction of trees and mountains to make way for expensive subdivisions, the building of structures on waterways and river banks and even creeks. Not to say the indiscriminate disposal of garbage that finds its way in canals, esteros and rivers. Where is the government's Clean and Green program that is conducted year after year?

  to be continued