React to a Global Issue

Laureano Gregorio III

2006-09250

CE 131 WFQ

(a)

I lived in Manila my whole life. I am naïve about everything outside the metro as to my being accustomed to all the things the city boorishly boasts. Though, I have learned all throughout my years living here that metro manila is one of the most polluted places in the world, I haven’t really minded that fact because I live a particularly sheltered life here. I use a car everyday to school so the air-conditioning primarily shields me from acknowledging the horrid truth. So, to my surprise, when I took a road trip to one of the peak places in Antipolo, I saw the sad reality of the place I really liked.

The view of the skyline of metro manila really highlighted the scene where the darkness of the air above it is like night and day from the forested parts in the horizon. The smog rising from where I lived literally is black and to think, I was inhaling this air without a care in the world. This really woke up my sense of being an environmentalist since I saw that you can live oblivious to the world around you but once you see that the extreme state of the world you live in can really be different from what it was like before, you get guilty and depressed.

(b)

Watching the documentary “Signos – Banta ng Nagbabagong Klima” enlightened me to the changes happening around me and made me realize how big the impact is to everyone. Though, much about global warming is far too familiar for us students, it takes some hard facts and figures for us to truly pay attention. The gravity of this topic, as I have learned after seeing this documentary, is too infamous and important to remain just a passing issue.

Global warming was talked about in the film in the sense of the changes it creates and the disastrous implications of these changes. It is felt throughout the world as to it being global but the effects of it fall too close to home as we can see in our very own country. Bicol and Zamboanga experience typhoons; Malabon faces heavy rains and thus, floods; La Union and Lanao del Sur suffer flash floods. These are just to name a few of the extreme situations brought about by the continuous heating of the earth’s surface due to the carbon atmosphere. Yet, there is more that stem out from these problems. We now have food shortage because of the continuous destruction of our crops. Also, bacteria thrives more in the high temperature making malaria and dengue become more prominent. Thus, death rates increase (300 filipinos had malaria last year alone). More people become poorer because their livelihoods and even their homes are destroyed by these calamities (one town in La Union was before 30 hectares and it became just 3 hectares after these incidents). All these problems root from one problem that is global warming.

These are the hard facts that made me realize how my ignorance can really make a crucial effect on the life of others.

(c)

As was said by the speakers of the film (Dr. Cosimo, Dr. Inventor, Dr. Fortes, Dr. Amadore, Dr. Perez, Dr. Paraso, Rafael Senga, and Helen Centeno), we all have a carbon footprint that is dictated by our daily affairs. We emit carbon gases that can aid in global warming. And so they said, we have the capacity to lessen our carbon footprint by doing earthly deeds as to prevent the terrible issue.

I intend to do every possible act that can be done to lessen my carbon footprint. I know it starts from the little things we do everyday that can make the biggest changes. To name a few, I will stop using plastic bags since I’ve learned that only three percent of this gets recycled and it takes 1000 years for this to melt naturally. I will also minimize my use of energy generally after seeing our primary source of energy is fossil fuel and this is one of the main contributors to global warming.

All these things were really shocking for me. Still, I am thankful that I have realized all these so now I can do something about it. With all this in mind, I intend to make the biggest difference by making people become conscious as I have.