First of a two-part series<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(Note: As this article\ngoes to press, one of the Philippine groups organizing for the global climate\nstrike is under surveillance by State security forces and has received reports\nof an impending raid on their headquarters.) <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Around the globe on September 20, the youth are leading a\ncoordinated strike to protest government and business inaction on climate\nchange. The climate strike is anticipated to be one of the largest\nenvironmental rallies in history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n On Monday, September 23, the United Nations (UN) will hold a\nclimate action summit, which is more of an emergency meeting ostensibly to\nseriously increase their commitments in reducing carbon emissions under the otherwise\nwatered-down 2015 Paris climate accord. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It seems however that the youth are not expecting any\ndramatic outcome from the UN meeting. They are planning another global strike\nfor September 27 and every Friday thereafter until a drastic, genuine, official\naction is taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the climate issue appears to affect everyone, there\nare climate change deniers. Led by the US and neoliberalism\u2019s apologists, they\nfocus their efforts not on presenting contrary evidence but simply on\ndiscrediting climate activists whom they tag \u201ccrisis-ists\u201d or \u201ccrisis\nalarmists\u201d. The deniers are saying that the young people are simply being used\nby the climate activists to paint an irrevocable apocalypse for the planet and\nto call for system change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Climate change is a hoax, the deniers say. They deny the\nclimate crisis. They deny the system of unsustainable production and\nconsumption known as monopoly capitalism as the root of the crisis, and that\nthis system is pushing humanity to the brink of a catastrophe. They deny that\nsome people and nations are more vulnerable than others and that monopoly\ncapitalism has brought on this historical injustice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, they justify the intensification of neoliberal\npolicies to maintain the unsustainable system and push for business-more-than-usual.\nThey do so in quite fascistic fashion, including the use of force to crack down\non the climate activists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here is the science<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Earth has been observed to be warming over the last\ncentury at an accelerated pace through the last four decades, with the five\nwarmest years on record taking place since 2010. The average global temperature\nhas increased by 0.9\u00b0<\/strong>C and by as much as\n2.2\u00b0<\/strong>C in some regions. In the\nPhilippines, the average temperature increased by 0.57\u00b0<\/strong>C from 1951 to 2009 alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Scientific evidence has concluded that climate change is caused by the upsurge of greenhouse gases (GHG),\nespecially carbon dioxide (CO2<\/sub>). GHGs are trapped in the atmosphere\nto a level that far exceeds what is needed to warm the Earth. Scientists have\nobserved that GHG emissions have increased by 36% since 1850, since the\nIndustrial Revolution, and by 70% from 1970 to 2004, since the world made great\nstrides in technology and production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CO2 <\/sub>is the most important for three reasons. It is the\nlargest man-made GHG, accounting for 84% of climate change from GHGs in the\nlast decade. It lasts in the atmosphere for extensive periods, say for hundreds\nof years. Finally, it is the only GHG humans don\u2019t need to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More erratic and extreme weather events (torrential rains and\nheavy downpours, severe flooding, landslides, droughts, forest fires, among\nothers) have been the most dramatic signs of climate change. Typhoon Haiyan\n(Yolanda) alone is a global reminder of the increased incidence of climate\nhazards, impacting on millions of lives, properties and livelihoods. The number\nof super-typhoons hitting the Philippines has increased, while the cycle of the\nEl Ni\u00f1o drought in the country has shortened. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Oceans, like forests, can help moderate the climate. They absorb\nmore than 30% of the heat as well as 25% of the CO2\n<\/sub>released by human activity. But with the Earth\u2019s rapid heating and\nchemical pollution, they have also absorbed the negative impacts of climate\nchange. Seawater is having a four-way transformation: acidification,\nwarming, de-oxygenation, and relative rise of level. This does not only\nthreaten biodiversity and the survival of the world\u2019s species but may also lead\nto the disappearance of island nations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We are experiencing the risks in two ways: 1) the increase in\nclimate hazards that are leading to huge economic losses and human deaths, and\n2) the increase in the vulnerability of communities in the forms of ecosystem\ndegradation, damages to crops, livestock deaths, food and water shortage,\nair-borne and water-borne diseases, damages to infrastructure, degradation of\ncoastal regions, and displacement of lowland populations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Doomsayers? The UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change\n(IPCC) itself is saying that we need to keep global warming to well below 1.5\u00b0<\/strong>C to survive. It estimates that unless\ncurrent trends are radically reversed, the global average temperature will\nshoot up by 2.5\u00b0C by 2050, compared to 1986-2005 levels. The IPCC identifies an average increase of 2.0\u00b0C as the\npoint upon which this rapid global warming is dangerous and irreversible for at\nleast a century. A 2014 study predicts that this benchmark will be reached by\n2036. The global climate strikers on the other hand are predicting the\nirreversible year to be 2030, or 11 years away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, scientists point out that even if GHG emissions were\nstabilized or reduced today, the already warm temperature of the ocean will\nbring a warmer atmosphere over time. Stockholm Environment Institute scientists\nalso explain that the IPCC has under-estimated impact projections by failing to\ntake into account feedback loops, defined as effects that impact back on their\ncauses and therefore lead to even larger two-way effects. The scientists are\nwarning of future climate tipping points (other than the redline temperature),\nwhich are abrupt, exponential and irreversible changes taking place due to a\ncomplex of unforeseen feedback loops. We don\u2019t have much time. ###<\/p>\n\n\n\n The last part of this series will discuss how climate\nchange is directly linked with the capitalist crisis, and how governments still\nforce harsher neoliberal policies that only aggravate the problem.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Photo from Bulatlat<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BY ROSARIO GUZMAN<\/p>\n The climate strike is a fight-back strike, it can\u2019t be any other. It is a social justice issue as it is based on people\u2019s assertion of their right to determine our common future.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":8581,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"single-withbanner.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_expiration-date-status":"saved","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[]},"categories":[2048,3],"tags":[1834,1902,176,2072,347,2073,96,1463,116,223,2047],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8578"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8578"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9277,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8578\/revisions\/9277"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}