Climate change everybody’s concern

Owing to the government’s failure to address the dangers posed by climate change with a comprehensive national policy, regions, provinces and municipalities should take their own roles to rein in its disastrous effects the disastrous phenomenon.

Efforts should be made to tame climate change with measures focused on reducing carbon monoxide emission. Carbon monoxide is the main culprit in air pollution.

People still see a lot of vehicles and factories emitting black smoke. As a result, temperature keeps rising, a far cry from the call of scientists to keep the temperature rise below two degrees Celsius.

Still fresh in our minds is the massive destruction brought by super typhoon Yolanda that killed almost 10,000 people most of them in Leyte. The question is how prepared are we if occurrence of that magnitude happens again. The answer is “we are not.”

In the US, a change from coal to gas in power generation helped reduce the temperature and bring it back to the level of the 1990s.

Quoting a United Nations report datelined London, the UN office for disaster reduction said climate change caused the death of 1.3 million people in 20 years worldwide. And direct economic losses placed at $2.9 billion.

The government must scale up the farmer’s mitigation actions. We need to adapt with the best of abilities and empower communities so they can be climate change resilient. Both disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation should be incorporated into a long term national and local development plan to tame the effects of climate change, according to Gonzalo Catan Jr. of Green Charcoal Philippines. – Gerry constantino, Muntinlupa