Press Release
September 13, 2008

'Act now,' Loren tells Filipinos to address climate change

The Filipinos must always think of the awesome pace of climate change and realize how little time is left to act.

Senator Loren Legarda issued the wake-up call yesterday as she reiterated the potential danger facing the Philippine archipelago if the Filipinos don't act now.

"There is something lacking in stewardship of our environment, and that's the sense of urgency of things," said Legarda, as she reacted to the pronouncement made by Dr. Josefino Comiso, a US-based Filipino physicist who is back in town under the "Balik-Scientist Program" of the Department of Science and Technology.

"The truth is climate change is more serious than we can possibly imagine, and yet Filipinos are seemingly not paying attention to this matter of great concern," she added.

Considering the country's contour and landscape in and around the more than seven thousand islands and islets, and its 'hot' location in the Pacific, the Philippines should have long before put in place measures to mitigate the effects of devastating disaster triggered by climate change.

"We have obviously not learned," Legarda admonished. "Call for tree planting is not a new idea. It was also a call of past administrations, yet Filipinos are not hell-bent on heeding it."

"We seem to have totally lost our respect for the environment. Indiscriminate and criminal logging practices including our failure to replant and reforest are fast converting our once verdant forest into bald mountains," she said.

A "warning bell" a few days ago was a disaster that struck in two barangays in Compostela Valley, leaving scores dead and others missing in a landslide triggered by heavy rains spawned by tropical Typhoon 'Marce.'

"Little do most of us realize that our present discomfort is only a warning signal of the danger facing our archipelago," said Legarda, an ecological warrior who is behind the project Luntiang Pilipinas.

Legarda, chair of the Senate Sub-Committee on Climate Change, also deplored the government's seeming lack of vision to address climate change, as exemplified by its delayed dissemination of geo-hazards maps.

"We're fond of acting in the eleventh minute when the danger is facing us right in the face. It's sad but true," Legarda said.

"And we're dealing only about the effects of intermittent rains. What about the extreme heat," she said.

Both extremities in weather shifts, Legarda explained, could trigger manifold effects which are awesome to contemplate.

Climate-induced migrations could, for example, see Compostela population concentrated in other places, and that will put them on another rounds of adaptation.

"Needless to say, we have to put in place measures to adapt climate change, and at the same time find ways to sustain development and renewable energy as fashionable and profitable in the short term but effective against climate change in the long term," she said.

"It's because whatever methods we have in mind to address climate change will surely need much time," she pointed out.

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