Collective effort

EARTH Day is on April 22 yet, two weeks from now, but it is never too early to make an appeal on behalf of our battered Mother Earth. We can do simple things for her such as withdrawal from our wasteful consumption habits. This will provide some relief to our beleaguered environment and drive home the point that the solution to extreme consequences of climate change would be the disciplined use of energy like electricity and vehicle fuel, reduction of water and food wastage, and promotion of alternative clean energy.

There is a need to protect the environment and address the worsening impact of climate change. We won’t grow tired reminding ourselves of our grave moral responsibility to protect Mother Earth and help mitigate carbon emissions. Climate Change, which upsets global temperatures and the balance of the global climate, is primarily caused by the warming of the earth due to carbon dioxide emissions with the extensive use of burning of fossil fuels, such as gasoline, coal and oil.

Remember: just less than three years ago, the Germanwatch Risk Index at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Lima, Peru identified the Philippines as the “country most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.” In 2013, the strongest typhoon ever recorded in history, super typhoon “Yolanda”, devastated the country resulting to over 6,000 deaths.

A UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report said, “Things are worse than we had predicted. High levels of warming will result in magnified drought risks which will add to water stress and will in turn have consequences for agriculture and staples such as rice, wheat and corn.”

Climate change as a man-made disaster will need our collective efforts to address.