Opinionsmy takeThe catastrophes that we face

The catastrophes that we face

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There are ten. Previously: Celsius, Conflagrations, Contagions, Creating alternative natures, Carbon culture, and Congestion. This week, another two:

Criminality
This creates disorder in society. When laws are flaunted and our moral and ethical rules and standards are defanged, and are gnashed with the grinding molars of human disrespect and malicious exercise of coercive power over others, the fabrics of social order get shredded. Society tears apart, and our ability to survive and to work together toward achieving our common good gets dissipated.

Assault against persons and properties, and against our natural wealth, are “as old as time”. But we’ve evolved new tools for assaulting others and our environment, including the use of law to commit lawlessness! This is called “lawfare”, which is devastating to legitimacy of how we order our way of life.

Says former Ambassador Roberto P. Romulo (Filipino Worldview in Philippine Star, Feb. 28, 2020) addressed to the President: “…the increasing use of ‘Lawfare’ which Wikipedia defines as ‘the misuse of legal systems and principles against an enemy, such as by damaging or delegitimizing them, tying up their time or winning a public relations victory’ to stifle those who have opposed you or spoken against you has reached alarming proportions. They will cause long-lasting damage to the legitimacy of our legal system.”

For Dr. Tony La Viña, an environmental and human rights lawyer and a teacher of moral philosophy, “lawfare” is using law to “engage in moral lawlessness” (La Viña 2020, in https://www.facebook.com/609776966/posts/ 10158195378666967/?d=n).

When criminality gets so foul so that law itself gets wielded as a weapon to commit crimes against humans and Nature, society gets unhinged of its fundamental moorings. It gets adrift, and would be tossed about, and eventually wrecked by the whims of those having the power to use the law for lawless intents.

It’d be catastrophic to the very law and order that otherwise hold society together.

Collapsing life support systems
Nature provides four essential “ecosystem services” to sustain life on earth. These are a) provisioning services, b) regulating services, c) cultural services, and d) supporting services (see Millennium Assessment Reports, 2005).

Provisioning services are about how Nature produces matter, energy, and information that are essential to maintaining life. These essentials include air, water, nutrients, heat, and genetic information that allow life to breath, keep hydrated, have food and nutrients, heal when injured and sick, reproduce, and otherwise sustain its functions.

Regulating services are about how Nature controls the rhyme and rhythm of its elements. This includes regulating water, carbon, and nutrient cycles; biorhythms; climate patterns and changes; the balance of predator-prey populations and of producers and consumers; and controlling outbursts of pathogens.

Cultural services refer to the non-material benefits that people and other life forms obtain from the environment such as psycho-emotional and spiritual enrichments from beautiful landscapes; safe and secure habitats to grow and thrive (including for plants and animals); and other things that offer humans in particular with spaces for cognitive development, reflection, recreation, and aesthetic experiences.

Supporting services refers to Nature’s ability to produce and stockpile on all that are needed to produce the preceding three ecosystem services. Examples of these include biomass production; the production of atmospheric gasses; soil formation and retention; making possible and sustaining key processes like nutrient cycling and water cycling; and providing habitats for diverse life forms to survive and thrive.

When these services are impaired, eroded, and diminished because of our destructive and unchecked consumption of them (either because of greed or our high population growth), the very phenomenon of life on earth itself would be put at risk. If our air and water get more polluted, the fertility of our soils are depleted, our genetic resources are corrupted and made less sustainable, and balances in the rhyme and rhythm of Nature get askew, trouble looms. It’d be a catastrophe not only for us humans, but for all of life in our planet.

Two catastrophes. The good news again is: people are doing something about them. Trying their best to reduce our risks and vulnerabilities to them. With faith on them, and on God, we look forward to their successes. (These would be discussed in a series of columns following this series on catastrophes we face.)

Next week, the last two…

______________________________

Author’s email: [email protected]

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