Php 70.00 Vol. 44 No. 1 • JANUARY 2010 - IMPACT Magazine Online!

COVER
STORY
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warmer. Warmer water in the top layer
of the ocean drives more convection
energy to fuel more powerful typhoons
and hurricanes in increased frequency,
as so many people saw in An Inconvenient
Truth. As water temperatures
go up, wind velocity goes up, and so
does storm moisture condensation. It
also causes more of both floods and
droughts. Then, too, the warming sucks
more moisture out of the soil and, as a
consequence, increases desertification,
causes more fires, and experiences less
productive agriculture.
Fossil fuels such as coal, oil and
natural gas are extracted from the
Earth’s crust and are not renewable in
ecological time spans. When these fuels
burn, carbon dioxide (CO2) is emitted.
To keep CO2 levels in the atmosphere
from rising, only two options exist:
human technological sequestration of
these emissions, such as deep-well injection;
or natural sequestration. Natural
sequestration occurs when ecosystems
absorb CO2 and store it in standing biomass
such as trees. Currently, it must be
noted, only negligible amounts of CO2
are sequestered by human means.
To reduce our ecological footprint
we humans must get better at managing
the ecosystems that provide us Earth’s
services on nature’s terms and at nature’s
scale, not in terms of our greed or artificial
need. This means that decisions
in each sector, such as agriculture or
fisheries, architecture or transportation,
must be taken with an eye to broader
ecological consequences and, more
concretely, to carbon cutting—given
that the carbon footprint is the most
critical at this time. We would then
find ways to manage
the ecosystem
as a whole across our
own boundaries—
across property lines
and political borders,
and certainly, at the
very least, across
the various divisions
and sectors in a given
government and nation.
We can’t deny
that biocapacity is
not evenly distributed
around the world.
The eight countries
with the most biocapacity—the
United
States, Brazil, Russia,
China, Canada, India, Argentina
and Australia—contain 50 per cent of
the total world biocapacity. Three of
them—the United States, China and
India—are ecological debtors, with their
national footprints exceeding their own
biocapacity.
At Copenhagen last month those
three blew up the United Nations by
equivalently telling all who cared to
listen that “you poor nations can spout
off all you want on questions like human
rights or the role of women or fighting
polio or handling refugees. But when
you get too close to the center of things
that count—the fossil fuel that’s at the
center of our economy—you can forget
about it. We’re not interested. You’re
a bother, and when you sink beneath
the waves we don’t want to hear much
about it” (cf Alternet). China, the U.S.,
and India don’t want anyone controlling
their use of coal in any meaningful way.
In a way, despite a few glimmers of
hope, Copenhagen effectively formed
a coalition of foxes who will together
govern the henhouse.
Philippine applications
What are we in the Philippines
today—debtors or creditors? What is
our ecological footprint, our carbon
footprint, our biocapacity, our common
programs? Do we see the interrelatedness
of environmental degradation
and underdevelopment? Do we have
concrete plans for our society’s various
sectors to pursue tenaciously for
the common good? We need to take
counsel, gather together and make the
strongest common resolve.
The fight against global warming
has become like a religion and people
want to be seen to be doing the right
thing. Fathering in this area has indeed
become quite prolific. For some, a move
towards clean energy spells opportunity.
They sell power-generation equipment
and aircraft and train engines. New regulations
requiring companies to adopt
cleaner processes mean that capital
equipment is replaced more quickly, to
the benefit of such companies like GE
and Siemens.
© CBCP-NASSA
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IMPACT • January 2010