Two recent newspaper articles about climate change in the far distant future, say 2500 or so, (titled, respectively, “How much more proof is needed for people to act?†and “Ignoring the future — the psychology of denialâ€) emphasized the importance of facing major issues that will have an impact on the future of the human species.
Climate change is indeed an issue that is on everyone’s mind, and while the Philippines seems to be far removed from the experts who recently made their way to Copenhagen to try to hammer out blueprints to prevent global warming from having a Doomsday impact on humankind, the Philippines will also be on the front lines of these issues.
Why? Because the Philippines will very likely not exist as a country by the year 2500. Everyone there will have migrated north to Russia and Alaska.
Please bear with me as I explain. And read this all very slowly. The future is in your hands. Think about it.
Despite most observers’ belief that solutions lie in mitigation, there are a growing number of climatologists and scientists who believe that the A-word — adaptation — must be confronted head-on, too. The fact is — despite the head-in-the-sand protestations of climate denialists — that we cannot stop climate change or global warming.
The Earth’s atmosphere has already passed the tipping point, and in the next 500 years, temperatures and sea levels will rise considerably and millions, even billions, of people from the tropical and temperate zones will be forced to migrate in search of food, fuel and shelter. This includes the people of the Philippines.
By the year 2500, the Philippines will be largely uninhabited, except for a few stragglers eking out a subsistence life on some islands. The rest of the population will have migrated north to Russia’s northern coast or northern parts of Alaska and Canada to find safe harbor from the devastating impact of global warming.
Okay, how do I know all this, you ask? I don’t know. I am just saying that we all must be prepared for the worst-case scenario.
By the year 2500, most likely, the people of the Philippines en masse will have left the country for faraway northern regions to find shelter in UN-funded climate refuges in places such as Russia, Canada and Alaska. Israeli climate refugees will join millions of others from India, Vietnam,Thailand, Japan and Taiwan. It won’t be a pretty picture.
When I asked a professor at National Taiwan University in Taipei if this was a possible future scenario for the Philippines some 500 years from now, he said it was very possible, and that these issues needed to be addressed now, if only as a thought exercise, and even if it all sounded like a science fiction movie script. When I asked acclaimed British scientist James Lovelock if such a scenario for the Philippines was likely, he said to me in an e-mail: “It may very well happen, yes.â€
We humans cannot engineer our way out of global warming, although scientists who believe in geo-engineering have offered theories on how to do it. There are no easy fixes. Humankind has pumped too many greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the result of the industrial revolution that gave us trains, planes, automobiles and much more, enabling us to live comfortable and trendy lives — and now there is so much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that the Earth cannot recover.
The Philippines , like the rest of the world, is doomed to a bleak future filled with billions of climate refugees seeking shelter in the far north, and in places like New Zealand, Tasmania and Antarctica in the far south.
Meetings in Copenhagen and Rio de Janeiro and at the UN in Manhattan will not stop global warming. What we need to focus on now is preparing future generations for what our world will become in the next 500 years and how best to survive it.
For the next 100 to 200 years or so, life will go on as normal in the Philippines in terms of climate change and global warming issues. There is nothing to worry about now. For the next 100 years posh department stores will hawk their trendy items, computer firms will launch their latest gadgets and airline companies will continue to offer passengers quick passage here and there, to Manhattan and London, for business and for pleasure.
But in the next 500 years, according to Lovelock and other scientists who are not afraid to think outside the box and push the envelope, things are going to get bad. Unspeakably bad.
Those of us who are alive today won’t suffer, and the next few generations will be fine, too. The big trouble will probably start around 2200 — and last for some 300 years or so.
By 2500, the Philippines will be history, and so will be all the nations of Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe.
We are entering uncharted waters, and as the waters rise and the temperatures go up, future generations will have some important choices to make: where to live, how to live, how to grow food, how to power their climate refugee settlements, how to plan and how to pray to God Almighty.
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Thank you, blog master, for permitting me the space to publish the above commentary. I want to stress that it is mere speculation on my part, not prediction, I cannot see the future, and I published the article here in order to try to enter into a dialog with climate activists in Manila and elsewhere in your country, both pro and con my ideas. I have no agenda here, other than to spark discussion, both pro and con. So please comment here, readers, and feel free to email me also at danbloom AT gmail DOT com — I am an honorary member of the LVM Filipino Club in Juneau, Alaska (1979-1991) and I love to eat balut as much as the next person. I have never been to the Philippines yet, but I have many friends from your country, both in the USA and in Taiwan. Long live the Philippines!
thanks for this very factual and alarming article. 200 0r 300 years is not too long for the continuing degradation of our environment. with the Philippines almost near to its extinction by this time one can not help but think and prepare for the worst as the clock ticks. if we will not bother to move and think to mitigate the effects of this insurmountable problem, we will hasten it and most probably experience its dreadful effect at the soonest possible time. perhaps we can at least delay its effect through planting more trees and any other means. We, the Bulaneño Community, of Bulan, Sorsogon, thru the leadership of our Honorable Mayor Helen C. de Castro have started an environmental program which motivated us in collectively moving towards the rehabilitation and preservation of our environment. One of which is the famous Fiesta sa Kabubudlan (feast of the Mountains) every 1st Saturday of October which frequented by almost 8,000 to 10,000 people from all sectors of our community and the nearby towns and provinces. We all flock to a 14.3 hectares of hilly garbage dumpsite now turned to an ecological park for an overnight camp out activities and tree planting activities. For seven consecutive years, development have seen and is now actually a man made forest. Such this kind of activities, I believe we can save our mother earth.
Climate changes had been happening ever since (from ice age to date). Carbon dioxide (and other green house gases) is not only produced by burning fossils or its derivatives (petroleum, coal) but also by human discharges (as we breathe, perspire, and other wastes), rotten plants & animals, volcanoes, and the largest percentage – sea or ocean. Lately, there is NASA’s latest advisory of a getting hotter environment which could be based on their latest finding (by far reaching UV telescope) of nuclear magnitude explosions in the sun’s surface this June 7, 2011 in which the heat radiated away from the sun but travels not directly to earth’s direction. Thus the relative effect our planet is recently experiencing. See http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/06/07/2224225/Massive-Explosion-On-the-Sun from the web. By the way sometime in 2009, earth’s temperature was reported as lowering which also cause panic to global warming advocates, see http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2096167/earths_temperature_falling_global_warming.html. Earth’s warming could be mainly, at most rapid change, affected by the sun’s surface activities, by which no mortal can control – it’s Gods will. As such, many observers have argued that global warming advocates only mean business, as processes and equipment believed to counter global warming are not for free. None the less, we have to make our environment clean and apt for living, as this is the only planet we can live at least for our lifetime, as well as our unique country the Philippines.
http://spgensantos.ph/2012/01/sbn-priveledge-speech/
Checkout the Philippines’ GSC vice mayor’s speech regarding the global warming
sobrang init talaga ng panahon ngayon..