Green Minded: Millennials and Climate Action
(Editor's Note: With some minor edits, this article was originally published on the September issue of U, the official publication of National Association of UNESCO Clubs in the Philippines under the country's National Commission for UNESCO. The author gladly allowed us to have it published here as a contributed article for a wider media mileage.)
Millennials—those born from 1980 onward—comprise about 36-40 percent of the total population in the world. We are already in a different world and with a different worldview. We have grown up in a time of rapid change, giving us a set of priorities and expectations sharply different from previous generations.
We usually complain about the prevailing heat even when we should actually be experiencing the opposite. I remember a friend saying in a middle of a summer day: “People living in well-made houses of bricks and cement may have the riches but they don’t have the comfort people living in huts and not so confined houses experience when the sun is at its peak shining.” I sometimes delve on these events myself to the point that I can almost believe that this is the new norm.
We hear from the news the worsening effects of rising temperatures as well as heat index rates. The diseases and ailments that emerge and re-emerge because of high temperatures. The recent global health problem which alarmed health officials and even sports officials for the upcoming Rio Olympics is the Zika Virus disease spread by mosquitoes in the Latin American countries. The forest fires which became uncontrollable as the fire continues to degrade the natural habitat of endangered endemic species of flora and fauna.
Our country is the most vulnerable developing country to climate risk-related disasters. We are affected by the unprecedented increase of temperatures that pose risks for human health, availability of water sources that worsens once the El Niño phenomenon prevails. Our fertile lands have dried up and have disabled our poor farmers to produce food to be served on our plates but sadly to say, even they ask for food now.
The carnage in Kidapawan City last summer only proves that life’s irony is now haunting us due to our inaction not just from the government sector but from all of us, to simply put it the apathetic disposition of most Filipinos to agriculture and farmers. Forest fires are becoming abundant and uncontrollable largely to be linked to low humidity and high temperatures.
A portion of our tallest mountain, Mt. Apo, home to amazing species of flora and fauna, have been caught under fire which further endangered the species there. The water systems that supply our water for drinking and for commercial purposes are slowly reaching its drought and may come to a point when we will have scarcity of this life giving resource.
Our oceans absorb 90% of the heat we get from the sun which is already allowing the ocean to expand and consequently, the melting of ice sheets both in the north and south poles. This incidence will mean higher sea level that would impede communities living near coasts. Adding to the severity of the problem is the depletion of oxygen and ocean acidification. These two processes mean the mass extinction of marine life and this phenomenon would be challenging for us humans.
We have been complacent about these issues and only until now that we are actually experiencing the ill effects of the changing climate because of our exploitation and activities, it now poses the question: should we continue to be in the state of mind which in fact started the problem? and will we wait for the time when we will become so helpless to face the horrors of the present dilemma?
It is now the time to make big corporations and industries accountable for the exploitative extraction of natural resources they have done since time immemorial. They are not the ones who are actually suffering as the Holy Father Pope Francis stated, “The greatest effects of all attacks on the environment are suffered by the poorest.”
We are called to take action on our climate and our planet. We, the passionate, decisive, vibrant and concerned Youth should be more than ever united for one advocacy, for one aim. An aim to make our public officials accountable to the pledges and legally binding agreements that our country have signed regarding Climate Change in the Paris Accord, Environment and Sustainable Development. We have to take a stand now for our planet. This is the right time, the only time to improve, diversify and strengthen the existing approaches as well as the planned strategies for its implementation to curb greenhouse gas emissions, allow communities and nations to become climate smart and climate resilient societies and slow down climate change to not further make millions of lives miserable.
More than the inherent responsibility to act for our own sake, let us take this as a brave stance for legacy. The question now, will Climate Action be our legacy? Let’s realize it for ourselves today as every help counts.
Jason Salvadora is a 4th year student of Bicol University College of Education. He is a Volunteer Climate Reality Leader of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps and was trained by US Former VP and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Al Gore last March 14-16 at the Sofitel Manila. He is also a Youth Campaigner of the #IAmHampasLupa Food and Ecological Agriculture Campaign by the Greenpeace Southeast Asia-Philippines.
