By ARTURO BOQUIREN
Fight for our fatherland and mother earth! These are the two major responsibilities of the Filipino in the 21st century.
Threatening mother earth today is global warming. Global warming puts human existence at risk. If nothing is done today, there will be a 25-90% increase in greenhouse gases between 2000 and 2030. This will exacerbate global warming thereby raise sea levels, melt glaciers and polar ice sheets, promote forest fires, alter cropping patterns, and stimulate severe pest infestations. It will be many times worse than the current food crises. Millions in various continents all over the globe can die.
Thus, it is the task of every Filipino to contribute to the efforts to arrest global warming. Filipinos can contribute to the arrest of global warming by stopping forest denudation, significantly reducing or eliminating carbon exhausts, shifting to lifestyles that exert less pressure on resources, promoting recycling rather than resource extraction, and adopting production, packaging, transport, and consumption technologies that are environment friendly or that significantly reduce carbon emissions.
Although the G-8 countries (United States, Japan, Russia, Germany, France, Britain, Canada, and Italy) had recently endorsed to halve carbon emissions by 2050, there are still important tasks. For one, the endorsement must be transformed into an international legal obligation. The targets will have to be converted into plans and the plans will have to be implemented.
Further, environment groups have argued that the appropriate target that will help ensure the survival of mankind will have to involve radical reductions. Christian Aid, a leading international NGO group had been advocating a carbon emission reduction target of 66% or two-thirds for developed countries. This advocacy is feasible. Even Japan, for instance, can commit to an 80% reduction target while Britain is considering increasing its 60% reduction target.
There is an issue of dominance in access to technologies that would reduce global warming. Japan appears ahead in the technology while the United States appears to be lagging behind. This explains the US reluctance to commit itself to more radical targets. The US has been a major stumbling block to more radical targets in the reduction of carbon emissions that are crucial for significantly reducing global warming. The US by the sheer size of its economy is the largest contributor to global warming, directly and indirectly. Overconsumption stimulated by capitalism’s drive for more profit promoted global warming.
Meanwhile, the Filipino is also confronted with imperialism and semi-feudalism. Imperialism manifests itself as the effective influence of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in the economy, the two being the principal agents of imperialism despite its multilateral character. The local elite through various forms of business partnerships and shared interests with imperialism is a de facto agent, of course.
On the other hand, semi-feudalism manifests itself as the perpetuation of landlessness among the peasantry and their subjection to mass poverty. At the same time, semi-feudalism manifest also itself as underdevelopment as the economy is unable to acquire and sustain a momentum for a self-sustaining economic growth. Production, packaging, computer, communication, and transport technologies remain trapped at the low-end. The develop world focus on high end products while developing country products oftentimes involve handicrafts and cottage industries. When high-end technologies are involved, our products tend to be limited on reproduction and not on invention and innovation. We industrialize but the industrialization is constrained and utilizes relatively inferior technologies. Industrial growth is stunted and that is why we resort to labor exports. We export our teachers, nurses, and highly skilled personnel!
This is not to say that elimination of imperialism and semi-feudalism will imply a bed of roses for the country. What is merely implied with the elimination of imperialist and semi-feudal dominance is that the primary obstacles to Philippine development are eliminated and that the potentials for self-sustaining environment-friendly growth will not be stifled.
Removing imperialism and semi-feudalism will not guarantee a bed of roses but it will unleash the potentials of the Filipino to be the master and developer of his destiny that are requisites for accelerated economic growth with equity and development. The notion of equity articulated here, of course, pertains to social, inter-generational, spatial, ethnic, and gender equity. #
(The writer maintains a blog at www.geocities.com/arturoboquiren. Comments can be coursed through www.nordis.net, artboquiren2040@yahoo.com, and +63927-536-8431)(NorDis)
