What irony of fate!

It’s often said that Mother Nature doesn’t play fair and square. It plays favorites, just like any human mother in some instances when she has a special apple of her eye among her brood.

Time was when the Philippines had been perceived as Nature’s paradise, since the Great Creator stylishly molded it into an archipelago with thousands of islands and isles, with lush vegetation and fertile soil, surrounded by rich and tame sea, and gifted with mild and temperate climate, with neither extremely torrid heat nor freezing cold.

Admittedly, that was then, that the Philippines was a virtual paradise… Now it’s getting to have been the object of Mother Nature’s wrath that used to be the ideal climate of four defined seasons that farmers unerringly predict when to sow corn, or to plant rice, and other farm activities. Now it’s shaping up as either the “El Niño” in killing dry spell, or the “La Niña” of typhoons and storms in devastating rains, floods and strong winds almost 20 times a year.

Scientists and other experts attribute the radical vagaries of Nature to the climate change or global warming that has inexorably come about because of man’s over-abuse of Nature.

Simplistically put, man’s unmitigated greenhouse gas emission has saturated the air and outer space to the extent of destroying the ozone layer that served as the “ceiling” that buffers the sun’s hot rays before reaching man on earth.

Thus, the over-sweltering sun causes the glacial ridges in the polar regions to rapid melting. Such massive melted ice flows to the Pacific Ocean and mixes with the warm water. The spate of melted ice mating with warm air results in the birth of turbulence that evolves into typhoons and storms bred from the Pacific Ocean and, naturally hitting Philippine archipelago at its eastern seaboard initially, like, Samar, up to Quezon, and the Luzon eastern seaboard.

In fact, it can be said that the Philippines is one of the countries most vulnerable to the climate change; if not, as the very top victim of natural disasters spawned by global warming.

The irony is that among the countries of the world that contribute to the global warming – China has now taken over USA as the leading greenhouse gas emitter – the Philippines emits only 0.03 percent of the world total carbon and methane elements to the outer space. Being the 12th populous nation worldwide, the Philippine gas emission is negligible; but yet, we are the top out of the 12 countries most vulnerable to global warming.

By the way, other than urging the nation to plant trees and other vegetations to produce oxygen to balance or counter the carbon emission, the only concrete step the Philippine government has pursued to combat the effects of climate change is just that, none else.

Other than lip service to help contain the greenhouse gas pollution, the government has practically done nothing worth mentioning. Meantime, typhoons, storms, and tremors habitually ravage the nation almost 20 times a year. In fact, this year’s initial typhoon “Basyang” had been under-rated by the PAGASA. As it turned out, it caused many fatalities, and vast perdition in crops, properties and unquantifiable sufferings.

And so, while the Philippines used to be the envy of other countries as Nature’s paradise, it has now radically become the symbol of Dante’s paradise lost with no chance to get back to its past splendor.

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