This was the reprimand by teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg to the global leaders assembled at the United Nations: “How dare you?!”
Instructing U.S. lawmakers to “Listen to the scientists” Thunberg made the same demand on an international scale, chastising world leaders for praising young activists like herself while failing to deliver on drastic actions needed to avert the worst effects of climate change.
Thunberg warned that if the world continued with business-as-usual, her generation would face an insurmountable catastrophe. “I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean,” the Swedish activist said, after traveling for two weeks on a solar-powered sailboat to reach the US this month. “Yet, you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you?”
Thunberg has quickly become the face of a global movement of young people demanding that their elders safeguard their planet’s future. As a result, millions of young people all over the world have joined Thunberg in a climate strike that she led from New York where she and 15 other young people filed a legal complaint with the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, arguing that major countries — Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, and Turkey — have known about the risks of climate change for decades but have failed to take sufficient action to curb their emissions.
The petitioners range from eight to 17 years old, and hail from Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, India, the Marshall Islands, Nigeria, Palau, South Africa, Sweden, Tunisia, and the US.
Closer to home, climate change is indeed happening now. In fact, the Philippines has been experiencing natural disasters more than enough that we can handle, putting our archipelago among “the most vulnerable” to the negative effects of climate change.
Latest empirical studies indicate changes in our climate in terms of temperature increases, and occurrences of extreme rainfall and heat. The total cost of extreme events related to climate change is high, around two percent of the country’s GDP. The nation has suffered from even more violent storms like Typhoon Haiyan. On average, about 20 tropical cyclones enter Philippine waters each year, with eight or nine making landfall.
And over the past decade, these tropical storms have struck the nation more often and more severely — scientists believe — because of climate change.
In addition, two factors unique to the Philippines — our geography (7,102 islands) and “development” (mining, denudation of forests, open-sand and gravel extractions, etc.) — have combined to exacerbate both this threat, and its devastating consequences.
Locally, our City continues with its unsolved garbage management problem, causing sanitation and health implications on the residents.
How about getting a closer and more serious look at what each and every Dumagueteño can do together to find a solution? All of us are affected so why not just Stop the blame game! Dare to solve the garbage problem!
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