Just A Thought on Climate...

Nalica, Michael John
05-04597
BS Civil Engineering


First day in the morning, I always complain to myself, "Ang lamig naman! Hirap gumising ng maaga..." After a few hours, the weather suddenly becomes warm. "My goodness! Ang init...parang hindi umaga..." Then, after twelve noon, temperature rises exponentially (...exaggerated..). "Wow! Sobrang init pare!!" Finally, a couple of hours later, rain falls. "Shocks! 'Yung payong ko nakalimutan ko..." And that's a day with me and the weather.

Those accounts may seem familiar every day I wake up. Changing temperatures, sudden rainfall, very hot afternoons and cold early mornings - these scenes had not been existed since I was a kid. When I heard of the terms "El Niño" and "La Niña" for the first time, I really don't care at that time. I was thinking of having my classes everyday, so that I could finish on the right track. I just care of having a great time with my friends during summer vacations. But as days, months, and years pass, things look so different when I look around me.

My teachers told me that a phenomenon is happening to our beloved Earth as we enter 21st century. They call it global warming. This was caused by too much greenhouse gases produced by several factors - factories, vehicles, burning of plastic materials, and others - rising on the atmosphere. These gases create an "envelope" that surrounds the Earth, trapping too much heat coming from the sun.

One of the effects created by global warming is obviously the changing of weather, and climate in general. It was shown in a documentary film "Signos: Banta ng Nagbabagong Klima" that I watched last week. According to it, as temperature would continiuously increase, icebergs will drastically melt, creating an increase of six meters in sea level. That could be disastrous for our country, especially that most of the islands here are almost at sea level, including Metro Manila.

That thought alone opened my eyes to what they call environmental awareness. Maybe another thousand years, the Earth could become a "hot" planet if we continue to emit greenhouse gases the destroys the atmosphere that protects us from excessive heat coming from the sun. Because of climate change, other effects recently becomes evident, such as longer and hotter droughts during summer and shorter but stronger rainy season, that caused destruction to properties and lives of the people.

During summer vacation, our family usually goes to my father's province, La Union. Everyday, I see many children swimming and diving on rivers while their parents wash their clothes on the same location. Even me and my father would go fishing for our lunch. It was nice to see such sight, that I would always do it everytime we went there. But unfortunately, the rivers that we went became dry. Only large rocks remained on the site, it looked like the riverbed that was before. It was bad to see such thing. I remembered while watching the film, the town of Bauang, La Union was in danger of being washed out because of rising water from the sea. Although visited by many tourists for surfing adventures, Bauang seemed to be affected by the climate change that is also happening around the country.

I remembered how Richard Gutierrez, the narrator of the film, shared his ideas on how to reduce the effects of global warming by doing simple things everyday. For example, recycling a portion of our wastes generated by us would help to minimize carbon emissions from burning wastes, especially plastics. Another is that using compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs means conserving at least a quarter of energy used as compared to incandescent light bulbs.

As of today, reducing greenhouse emissions takes very slow progress, compared to the increase of those gases during the last thirty years. Although the Kyoto Protocol was established to help reduce greenhouse gases, it is still not enough just to produce such laws. Actions speak louder than words, as they say. Evereyone of us should start taking their roles as protectors of our Mother Earth. Planting trees should be a good start, since they need carbon dioxide to produce food and oxygen for other living things. Some of us use bicycles as their means of transportation, an efficient and environment-friendly way of decreasing greenhouse gases.

Someday, our efforts to save our environment will not be wasted. Future generations will come to see what our Earth will look like at its best - clean and green.