By Digoy Fernandez

ONE does not have to be a genius to figure that any large city – Metro-Manila, for example – generates a huge carbon footprint by way of car and truck emissions, the generation and improper handling of waste, buildings and homes that are not green enough, and the lack of enough green spaces that can serve as carbon sinks while generating oxygen at the same time.

In the case of our own metropolis, short-sightedness on the part of many past administrators would find them making decisions on the basis of expediency rather than the consideration of the longer term suitability of the city as a habitat for man, flora, and fauna.

Thus, if a road had to be widened, any tree getting in the way would be immediately cut or destroyed, instead of seeking out a win-win solution where the road could be widened but not at the expense of such trees. Instead of encouraging the practice of separating garbage at the source in each and every single household and institution, we still have unsightly garbage dumps containing all sorts of detritus. This situation is what attracts the scavengers who seek to eke out a living by trying to salvage the recyclable or usable materials from plain garbage.

There are already too many environmental problems in the city begging for attention. For now, we will focus on the simple task of seeking empty spaces in the metropolis and converting these into green spaces.

As a example, I just have to point out what I have done within my own property and in the alleyway adjoining it. Not to mention the adjoining streets and some of the areas in our village park.

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By Digoy Fernandez

IN my last post, I took a swipe at the callous indifference of many urban dwellers who view trees as pesky leaf shedders or as green fodder that must be cut down whenever and wherever. While a single tree felled by a villager may seem to be of no consequence in the worldwide scheme of things, the fact is that we don’t only have a few trees going down each year. Countless numbers of trees are felled or burned down to make way for concrete or new planting ground. The earth’s greenbelt is fast fading, and the carbon sink that these trees are, fail to make up for the increasing amount of carbon dioxide being spewed into the atmosphere.

Last Sunday, during our regular weekly breakfast meeting of friends from our village, our soon to be retired high official from the ADB mentioned that their agency recently had to reassess their environmental programs because of alarm bells being sounded by their European counterparts. It seems that these agencies are truly worried about the effect of rising carbon levels and the effect these have on the melting of glaciers and the big snowy areas like that in Greenland. The net effect, of course, has been a steady rise in sea levels from 2 mm – 3 mm a year. A seemingly insignificant figure, once again, but truly alarming when one considers that the sea has risen by about a meter since turn of the last century. And the pace is picking up rather than slowing.

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By Digoy Fernandez

ONE of the unintended casualties of the present financial crisis is the temporary sidelining of the Global Warming debate from front and center in the attention of the world and its leaders. While understandable, we hope that the world will not lose focus on this very important aspect of our survival as a species on this planet.

The falling price of crude oil is welcome, of course. But it may also deflect efforts aimed at conceptualizing and bringing to actual production various alternative fuels and their respective machinery. Low crude prices should not tempt car manufacturers, for example, to keep on producing gas guzzling SUVs, but make them realize that the reprieve may be temporary. In this era of difficult funding and credit, we hope that enough wise financial institutions and foundations find the motivation to support the development of alternative fuels and machines that use them.

On the other hand, one unintended beneficiary of the decline in global economic activity and production may be the ability of the planet to regenerate itself. Hopefully, less harmful economic and personal activity would mean less greenhouse gases produced, and a chance to make up for lost time in the battle to clean our air.

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