No escape from reality?

“Caught in a landslide. No escape from reality. Open your eyes. Look up to the skies and see.”

Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’

To carry on with our current rate of consumption and exploitation of the Earth’s resources as if nothing consequential matters anymore forces us sooner into a tragic date with reality.

In the City of Naga, Cebu early morning Thursday, that face-off with nature’s rampage led to a death toll that has climbed already to 22 as of this writing, with dozens of others still missing as rescuers continue to dig through destroyed houses under debris.

The entire slope had cracked days earlier, its stability reportedly compromised by a nearby quarry site, and then it crumbled suddenly after days of incessant rain.

While investigators sift through evidence of what directly caused this massive landslide, a broader question runs throughout this episode which comes in the wake of an earlier super typhoon that swept northern Luzon. As climate change worsens, is there still a truly safe place ordinary people can call home?

I belong to a generation that will continue for years to bear the repercussions of climate change. An intergovernmental panel on climate change had reported in 2014 that the future effects of climate change will be most evident among populations in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia where the Philippines belongs.

This is not to say that our generation and our children’s generation are unlucky because generations before us spoiled the planet for some pointless reason. I’d be the first to admit that the era of fossil fuels, identified as the primary culprit of climate change, has brought unprecedented advances in medicine, agriculture, education, and the general human condition.

We have removed, for example, the near-death sentence of catching infectious diseases and even of pregnancy and childbirth. Fossil energy drove the industrial era which brought technological, social, and economic progress.

Definitely no one is suggesting that we go back to the hunting and gathering days where four out of six children were killed by the elements surrounding the circumstances of their elders’ way of life. But the consequences of modern progress now tell us that the fossil fuel-based industrial age has overstayed its welcome. We cannot afford to stay stuck in the age-old affliction of holding on to the status quo.

Global climate change is ushering in an era of typhoons that are not only unpredictable but also abnormal in scale and intensity. Our people are more vulnerable because half of the country’s population of around 100 million people depend on agriculture. Experts estimate that between 2006 and 2013, climate change caused $3.8 billion in accumulated damage and losses to the agriculture sector.

However, we have yet to hear of scaled-up policies, plans and steps from several sectors especially the government in adapting to or dealing with the adverse effects of climate change. There is a general feeling of a lack of meaningful response from government and even from the private sector.

A local government and the DENR cannot even act with practical dispatch on a simple complaint about a piggery farm’s pollution lodged by a small community. They would promise to investigate the matter, write formal notices and letters here and there, this while the whiff of livestock poop persists right under their very noses.

In the far more serious incident in Naga, we now hear statements from government regulators that the cracks in the limestone formation were a natural phenomenon, probably not caused by a large quarry nearby. People in Sitio Sindulan, Barangay Tinaan, were reportedly already advised to move out of the area.

Truth to tell, I’m skeptical if we can ever get to the bottom of matters like this. I feel like a lot of factors, including economic pressure, ignorance, ineptness, and corruption, come into play when it comes to making a choice between the long-term stability of the environment and the short-term interests of people and business.

“Nothing really matters… anyway the wind blows.” When it comes to the repercussions of climate change and a degraded environment, to live by that line in Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” is perilous to say the least.