Dirty energy, dirty weather lead to disasters

Climate activists demand climate justice

By The Climate Reality Project
November 19, 2012

MANILA  –  In a press briefing today, lawyer climate leaders and activists demand real path to genuine and serious climate change action framework towards climate and environmental justice.

Joining the week-long National Climate Change Consciousness Week initiated by the Climate Change Commission, the Public Attorney's Office partnered with Filipino members of The Climate Reality Project (TCRP), a global climate movement founded by Nobel laureate and former United States vice president Al Gore.

Together, they called for a system change towards a responsive global community addressing the challenges of climate crisis through a strategic switch from dirty sources of energy to a clean one.

“Last week, 16.2 million online viewers witnessed the 24 Hours of Reality: The Dirty Weather Report which exposed the realities of and solutions to the climate crisis through Internet broadcast by featuring news, voices, and multimedia content across all 24 time zones around the globe,” said climate leader Rodne Galicha, Philippine district manager of TCRP and adaptation cluster member of Aksyon Klima Pilipinas.

The 24-hour global event declared that dirty energy has created a world of Dirty Weather, “Today, climate disruption affects us all and it will take all of us together to solve it – when together we will stand up and demand real solutions to the climate crisis.”

“We must admit that we have been experiencing unusual and extreme weather conditions due to our careless and uncontrollable utilization of dirty energy like coal, oil and gas which in effect produces a lot of greenhouse gases trapping a lot of extra heat rising up the temperature of our planet,” said human ecologist and TCRP climate leader Floro Francisco, former assistant general manager of the Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA).

Francisco explained that extreme heat accelerates evaporation and warm air holds more moisture increasing more water vapor in the atmosphere resulting to an increase of rainfall.

“Extreme weather conditions means longer and deeper droughts killing crops and livelihoods, even people; more intense typhoons, heavy rainfall resulting to flooding and mudslides,” disaster risk reduction specialist and TCRP climate leader Miguel Magalang said in a previous statement. Magalang is executive director of Marinduque Council for Environmental Concerns (MACEC), affiliate of the Social Action Center of the Diocese of Boac.

"The solution for climate crisis should start from ourselves, however, leaders' political will is also a need - it is a moral imperative above all else," continued Magalang.

For Magalang, disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation initiatives should not be standalone ones but should form integral part of an integrated and sustainable development framework.

Coming up with a convergent institutional framework in the local governments that would push for the whole sustainable development platform is necessary. Further, the challenge of choosing industries that induce climate-related disasters must be faced – prioritizing extractive industries such as mining must be thought first a thousand times.

“Filipinos cannot solve the climate crisis alone – it must be a global action, together. Countries with high-level carbon emissions like the United States must lead in this global change through deeper emission cuts and we hope that the newly elected US President Barack Obama would be able to take the strongest step to help solve the climate crisis,” said lawyer and TCRP climate leader Persida Rueda-Acosta, chief of the Public Attorney’s Office.

In behalf of the Filipino lawyer members of the global movement, Acosta made it clear that climate justice was sought in the 24-hour event: "Whatever adaptation and mitigation poor, developing or smaller states are doing if larger and overly-consuming countries continue to exploit the natural resources of the powerless using more dirty energy, continuously polluting our water and air, heating up our climate – this crisis will still continue until it becomes too late to save the only planet we have."

Following the directives of President Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III on the observance of the National Climate Change Consciousness Week, Acosta revealed the Public Attorney's Office environmental plan by walking the talk: "By next year, most of our transactions will be paperless. We have already started integrating climate and environment related issues in some of our employee capacity building and development programs."

“Dirty energy means dirty weather, and dirty weather leads to disasters. We need legally binding agreements which all of humanity is treated equally in the principles of climate justice – top emitters of greenhouse gases (GHG) like China, the United States, the European Union, India and Russia. We fully support the position of our national government in the upcoming COP-18 in Doha, Qatar,” explained Acosta.

Lawyer members include Acosta herself, environmentalists Atty. Mario Maderazo and Atty. Christy Barroga.

Galicha said that the newly signed law called People’s Survival Fund may not be enough to address the financial needs of the Philippines for adaptation and mitigation. Aids which may flow from the newly approved United Nations Green Climate Fund will not be able to address the present climate crisis unless greenhouse gas emission is cut.

While least GHG emitting nations such as the archipelagic Philippines do their best to adapt and mitigate, they are still exposed and vulnerable to hazards and disasters: “A legally binding treaty for deeper greenhouse gas emission cut must be agreed upon or else climate-smart aid like GCF is all but hypocrisy, so do with the Philippines – the way forward is to be serious in climate policies: stop implementing disaster-inducing industries and take a vital step towards clean energy.”

The Climate Reality Project helps citizens around the world discover the truth about the climate crisis and take meaningful steps to bring about change. Our mission is to reveal the complete truth about the climate crisis in a way that ignites the moral courage in each of us.