EDITORIAL - Climate crisis upon us sooner than expected

The floods that ravaged Metro Manila and other parts of Luzon as a result of rains dumped by tropical storm Ondoy this past weekend have been interestingly described as a month's worth of rains coming down in just six hours.

The description is sufficient to take care of the volume of water. But it seems that no description is forthcoming to take care of the surprise that came with the water volume. Maybe it is best left for attribution to that looming spectre on the horizon: Global warming.

For the first time in the aftermath of many natural disasters, the Pagasa has been spared the usual criticisms about being inefficient, outmoded, etc. And this is because people knew that even international weather forecasts did not see much devastation from Ondoy.

CNN, for instance, correctly reported that it will be more of a wet than windy storm, but stopped short of making dire forecasts on the severity of the downpours. It was constrained from making more dire assessments because available satellite data did not suggest it.

And so nobody gave Ondoy much thought than what it deserved under the circumstances. Yet Ondoy proved everybody wrong and meteorologists will have to scramble to find out why. But as said early on, there could only be global warming as the answer.

Global warming is clearly skewing up the world weather. For instance, while Ondoy was dumping an unforeseen month's worth of rain in six hours, thousands of miles across the Pacific wildfires continued to rage in many areas of California.

Down under, savage dust storms are whipping up Australia. And up north, in Greenland, glaciers and ice fields are melting so rapidly that never-before-seen scenes of parched brown hills are making scientists drop to their knees in bewilderment.

The effects of global warming are making themselves more apparent more rapidly and more widely than previously anticipated and assessed. It is as if the revenge of the earth is going into high gear.

The Philippines is not in a position to make a significant contribution toward a possible reversal of the trend. What it can do is start, right now, with mitigating measures that will hopefully lessen the impact of the climate crisis.

With elections scheduled next year, maybe we should start considering politicians who make it a priority platform to address the utter lack of these mitigating measures. We have no time to lose. If we must eat politics, let us have climate on the plate.