Climate gone haywire

BY PET MELLIZA, The Beekeeper

Tribu Pagbag-o, the group leading the path to “pagbag-o” for Iloilo Province and its 1.4 million constituents, continues to shoot its own foot.

Its first “pagbag-o” is bumping off a competent head of the information office, Mary Lao, and replaced her with Mr. Hyde whose reputation as a plagiarist for which he was fired from a Manila daily, will hound him the rest of his life.

I have decided to stop writing about this gang in deference to the good Gov. Arthur Defensor, Sr. but they ask for it. They continue to provoke. Mr. Hyde and his co-conspirator, Dr. Jekyll, recently, met some writers asking them to answer earlier write-ups of, and hit back at,  yours truly. 


Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are supposed to be masters in communications, it’s their duty to defend themselves and stop being cry babies and seeking protection by Big Brother from the attacks they themselves have provoked.

Dr. Jekyll recently boasted they would renew the IDs of employees. I doubt he could do that now. What his gang procured so far is only the ID maker. The cabal is supposed to buy the whole package in a single purchase but it split the procurement. The package comprises a camera, printer plus the maker, three major components. The first two have not been bought yet. Why split the procurement, Dr. Jekyll?

I have to restrain myself for the time being. But I promise, it will be different when I shall have completed processing my retirement.

***

Yesterday (February 2) was a different Candelaria fiesta in Jaro district, Iloilo City, the first of its kind I have witnessed. I am not referring to the pomp, pageantry, and mass outpouring of folkloric piety which remain unchanged throughout.

It’s the weather that yours truly is referring to: it drizzled. The sky was gloomy. Previous Candelaria fests were warm and sunny. Today, it’s chilly. Morning temperature in the open is colder than inside an air-conditioned room.

This is an outcome of what we call climate change. It is real and a mere a glimpse of the worse that awaits us.

Rains in the month of January hurt mango and watermelon farms. One farmer, businessman Leon Ko, can only shake his head as he recalls his 29-hectare mango orchard at Sta. Barbara, with wilted blooms. He spent half a million pesos for flower inducers in December; rains spoiled that.

February is supposed to be in the season of summer fruits and vegetables. The rains ruined water melon farms in Iloilo Province which holds the title as home to the Philippine’s sweetest “sandia” (watermelon).

February is supposed to be the month when farmers of Leon and Alimodian towns transport vegetables, particularly, tomato, raddish and eggplant, by trucks or jeeploads. Tomato is supposed to go down to P20.00 per kilo by this month. But none of that is happening. Tomato is still peg at P30-40 per kilo at the Iloilo City Terminal Market and risks being pushed to P50 if the cold and cloudy weather continued.

What is happening reaffirms the thesis raised by environmentalists that environment is not just clean air, water, and soil. According to internationally known environmentalist, Atty. Tony Oposa, environment is “not just the birds, the flowers and the bees.”

“It’s people,” he would stress in his lectures.

Climate change, outcome of the destruction of the ozone layer, in turn blamed on the accumulated emission of green house gasses, has inflicted heavy toll on peoples worldwide. Power plants, particularly, coal-fired ones, are the biggest contributors to climate change.

We don’t have to go far. We are not in a rainy season but thousands of Filipinos evacuated in Bicol and Surigao due to floods. Lives are lost, crops are destroyed and the economic life of Filipino farmers and workers ruined due to climate change. We have floods in Saudi Arabia, a desert, and Queensland, Australia, an arid land.

What is happening, for instance, trashes the twaddle of greedy capitalists and their paid media spinners dismissing environmentalists as “anti-progress”. That mantra also flows from the mouth of Fray Butod who continues to pontificate in the pulpit beatifying the “clean” coal-fired power plant in La Paz, Iloilo City, as god almighty’s blessings to humanity in this part of the country.

Fray Butod also calls anti-coal advocates “anti-progress”.

Our recent experience this January with the weather having gone haywire, disproves that.