Safeguarding our environment

The perils of climate change are evident. The past few weeks have easily been the most prolonged heat we have experienced ever. And this will likely get worse as the world marches on at an accelerated pace to break records of greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, Climate.gov had declared 2023 the warmest year for the world since 1850.

In a February 2024 CNN report, global warming had surpassed in the past 12 months for the first time ever the 1.5-degrees Celsius critical limit that environmentalists have been warning about. The Paris Agreement on climate change among 196 countries in December 2015 had vowed that by 2025, carbon emissions would plateau and not rise 1.5-degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels to ensure that global warming would decline by 2030. We have breached the critical limit almost two years well before we had hoped to pin it down.

A June 2024 report by the World Meteorological Organization said there was a 47-percent probability, up from last year’s 32-percent forecast, that we would exceed in 2024-2028 the 1.5-degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels average of the past five years. The average was actually 1.6 percent from June 2023 to May 2024.

Obviously notwithstanding all the dire warnings about climate change, there really hasn’t been that much progress after all. Why has the world been unable to live up to the Paris Agreement?

A September 2021 CNN report noted that, ironically, after all the brouhaha of the Paris Agreement, none of the G20 countries — which are all the industrialized countries and the ones most responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions such as the US, Russia, China, Japan, Korea, Australia, Brazil, India, Saudi Arabia and the EEU — had lived up to their commitments.

Notably the US, the largest industrial power in the world, withdrew from the Paris Treaty commitments when Donald Trump became president and this was only restored when Joe Biden assumed office. I wonder if the US will flip-flop if Trump returns to the White House.

Sadly, these countries are in fact the biggest contributors to the greenhouse gas emissions, making a farce of their call for developing countries like the Philippines to strictly adhere to the Paris pledges. If these countries aren’t complying, how can the rest of the world take seriously the dangers of climate change?

If indeed the world is unwilling to lower their greenhouse gas emissions and decelerate the pace, what will happen? The record heat we have been experiencing is just the tip of the iceberg. For the first time in my memory, other than for typhoons, classes are now being suspended when the heat starts to become unbearable for the school children.

There will be big-time droughts and erratic weather patterns such as the El Niño and La Niña that will surely severely set back our prospects for getting out of our fiscal deficit hole.

Sadly, these countries are in fact the biggest contributors to the greenhouse gas emissions, making a farce of their call for developing countries like the Philippines to strictly adhere to the Paris pledges.

As the icebergs start melting and the sea levels start rising, exacerbated by the perennial problem of dumping by our citizenry of trash and plastic of all sorts in our streets, rivers and creeks, flooding will surely be more frequent and pronounced.

Food crops could be wiped out, if not by the heat, by the heavy rains and strong winds that will compound our problem with malnutrition. Marine life will be endangered, further straining another source of food. There will surely be a rise in various serious and deadly medical concerns such as heat stroke, cardiovascular and diarrheal diseases and malaria.

Typhoons reminiscent of “Yolanda” destroying dwellings, buildings and other infrastructure and widespread drownings will occur more frequently and in greater intensity. All in all, unless we wake up and do our part no matter how simple that might be, where we are headed will surely be mankind’s path to perdition.

Rotary International has recognized the problem and has named as one of its service areas of focus the safeguarding of the environment. In response, we at the Rotary Club of Makati are doing our best to live up to this call. I am proud to say that our club’s ARK Feedback in partnership with the Advancement for Rural KIds was awarded over the weekend first runner-up honors in the Philippine Rotary Media Foundation’s inaugural search for the most outstanding environmental projects for 2024.

I also congratulate the nine other finalists led by the winner, the Rotary Club of San Juan del Monte, for the collective response on behalf of all Rotarians to this clarion call.

Until next week… OBF!

For comments, email bing_matoto@yahoo.com.