‘Let Mother Earth breathe’

TIME to “give Mother Earth a break,” the Climate Change Commission (CCC) said as it urged Filipinos to join today’s Earth Hour and turn the lights off from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m.

“If people need to rest after a week of working, isn’t it only just that we give Mother Earth a break from all carbon dioxide emissions and other human activities that cause global warming for at least one hour?” CCC head Emmanuel de Guzman said in a statement.

Joining Earth Hour “allows Mother Earth to breathe,” he added.

The CCC described climate change as one of the world’s most pressing security issue, as it causes extreme weather conditions that have “posed serious threats to food supply, water, health, livelihood and infras- tructure worldwide.”

According to the CCC, “(v)arious science-based studies have linked the emergence of new infectious diseases, destruction of the ecosystem, supertyphoons, droughts, floods and mudslides, and the unusual rise in sea levels to climate change.”

The Philippines has experienced 328 weather-related major occurrences from 1994 to 2003 caused by climate change, the most by any other country in the world.

After Supertyphoon “Yolanda,” the strongest typhoon to make landfall, hit Eastern Visayas in 2013, the Philippines became the world’s poster child for climate change and a leading voice at the Paris Climate Change Summit last year.

With the Philippines in the lead, countries vulnerable to climate change pushed to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius to prevent catastrophic repercussions.