Another election. Time to again choose leaders. Time to once more cast our fate to a few who will be among those we’ll be entrusting power in the next three years. They’ll be the ones who will decide how to use our taxes. They’ll choose how to make our lives easier, better, or worse.
Then, after voting, we cross our fingers, and hope for the best, or fear to be again dismayed and disappointed. This is a repeating ritual in our civic life.
Meanwhile, our population continues to grow. We’re producing more carbon and greenhouse gasses that are warming our planet even more. Average temperature in our country has been rising by about 0.50C in the past 26 years, says PAGASA. Our climate is changing faster than has been anticipated. All dials in our global climate dashboard are blinking redder, and buzzing louder.
We can still cool our planet. Our leaders who hold the reins of government can open pathways for us to together do more to halt and reverse warming.
We could reduce our carbon and greenhouse gas emissions. We can prevent losses of any more species (which help green the earth and make it cooler). We can keep our oceans plastic-free, full of life, and healthy because the seas are important for cooling the earth, and helping us survive.
They capture and store the about 30 percent of the carbon produced by human activities, and help reduce atmospheric greenhouse gasses. Their depths absorb heat, and cool our planet. And they produce 75 percent of the earth’s oxygen that makes us breathe.
As an archipelagic country with seven times more sea than land, we must contribute to cooling the earth by looking after our seas.
Our leaders should commit to use the powers of government to consolidate action to help cool our earth because climate departure is real. It can happen sooner than later if we fail to reverse warming. Some say in 20 to 40 years.
This is when climate patterns known to this day would be entirely changed to what we’ve not seen before. Hot days will be much hotter. Devastating typhoons will be more devastating. There’ll be more wildfires. Seasons will change, and the timing of life cycles of plants and animals will change. New diseases and more virulent microbes will emerge.
These cut deep into how we live. Species extinction could accelerate. Our agriculture and food systems, technologies, investments, trade, home designs, travels and transportation, and education might need to be reconfigured.
Valuation and values of goods and services could change. The global economy could change. The global monetary system could change. Our social patterns and behaviors could change. And when we need it most, electricity would be likely to be in short supply.
It’d be possible that as heat indices climb higher, work schedules and school hours would shift to nights. We’d sleep by day to lower our metabolism and keep cool.
Voting is politics. Warming is physics. The first must address the second. Politics must act to make us survive the changing physics of our planet. Earth’s physics would be affecting our survival and ways of life far beyond our political seasons and terms of elected leaders.
But what have we been hearing about our planet’s physics in the campaign trails leading to our elections on May 12?
Please vote. With physics in mind.
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Author’s email: beniiim@icloud.com
