Reaction Paper

The film Signos gave CE 131’s current class of students a peak into climate change from a local perspective. Some issues shown were easy to relate to while others seemed so new. For instance, hotter Christmases and summers and the havoc raised by super-typhoons over the past few years are so fresh in our minds, but seeing that areas previously lain out with roads have adapted to using boats as their primary mode of transportation seemed so far out of my scope of local reality to the point that it seemed cartoonish. The situation shown looked surreal, yet people still seemed to get by pretty well. Personally, I have not been affected much by climate change over the course of my existence, and this is probably due to the fact that I grew up in Muntinlupa. We have not experienced intense losses do to climate change. The worst we could show for all the super-typhoons and natural disasters are flying roofs and fallen trees, which have been common through typhoon seasons since I was young. Nevertheless, I was always aware that though I was only (and still am)  a potential victim, I knew that I was also feeding the environment what it needed to retaliate in whatever fashion it saw fit. Though I have not been the victim, I could be, and I am partially responsible for each and every loss of each and every victim of climate change throughout my life.                                                     

I think the problem lies in the disagreement between technological economic growth and environmental sustainability, and the best that advocacies could do and preach for is still just a compromise. I realized that technology has made people so needy and so selfish at the same time.  For instance, it used to be more than enough to have a telephone line at home. Nowadays, even adolescents have their own cellular phones. Through these cellular phones alone, consumptions are raised by at least 300% for an ordinary suburban household. Do we need cellular phones to survive? No. Do we need cellular phones? Perhaps we have come to need them. Adding perceived needs is like adding rights, and like adding rights, we add responsibilities whether we acknowledge them or not. Sure, we have the right to travel via motorized transport rather than walk or ride a bike to wherever we want to go, but we also gained the responsibility to control its effects and make up for the damages it causes to our environment. It also applies for the little things, like the right to eat candy out of an individually packaged piece of candy wrapped in foil or plastic. We are responsible at the very least for throwing the packaging into a trash bin, yet people can’t even seem to get that part done. And that’s just the least we could have done. How then do we make up for the environmental implications of more serious contributions to the environment’s capacity to retaliate, like using motorized transport? That’s where the compromise comes in. We cannot on our own reproduce something that is not renewable, nor could we make all the pollution vanish. However, we could help in so many other ways. Part of the problem is not everyone realizes that they have to do their small part to create a great collective effect. Another is that not everyone sees the sense in making up for what you consume. We just consume and keep on consuming because it is what we want to or know how to do. Only when a majority of us stops having this outlook on consumption do we really stand a chance of taking on the challenge of preserving the Earth rather than just prolonging its possible existence. 

Ideally, laws should be enforced to make people take much more care of the environment. People should pay for damages to the environment immediately after inflicting them, whether it be monetary (which could be channeled to people who have dedicated themselves to the cause) or through actions. Several actions could make up for what we consume. As the website points out, we could even plant our own vegetables instead of letting them run the whole course of their journey from faraway farms into our stomachs and eventually out our asses. At the end of the day, it is up to every individual to take the right steps and do whatever he/she can to help the Earth maintain or even gain resources throughout the individual’s lifetime. 

I do practice simple techniques such as unplugging electronics that are not in use and minimizing my use of recreational electronics among other things. My footprint is at 15.05 global hectares, which translates to needing just 0.96 earths. I hope to learn in this course and in CE 132 how I could do my part in being a contractor, which is what I plan to be in the future. For now, I settle with the common simple energy saving practices and the occasional environmental clean-up projects that I receive invitations for. I also keep an open-mind for other suggestions as to how I can help out, but hypocrisy will not go a long way. For instance, should I meet someone who would convince me that it is significantly better for the environment to cook everything a certain way, then I could probably eat products cooked that way only. The possibilities are endless, and I will do my best to entertain them.

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