Choose between climate or systems change

What really is important to us Filipinos? Climate change or systems change? I am asking this because President Benigno “PNoy” Aquino III is now in Paris for the 21st Conference of Parties (COP 21) Summit, which supposedly ended yesterday. But looking at a photo in the newspaper of Filipino activists holding their placards during a Climate Solidarity Prayer March in Manila, one placard called for a moratorium on coal now while another by the Youth of the Earth called for “Systems Change, Not Climate Change.” So again, what is more important for us Filipinos?

Allow me to reprint yesterday’s editorial in The Philippine Star, which was entitled, “Global action vs. warming.” “It’s no coincidence that the Philippines is leading a forum of countries highly vulnerable to climate change at the United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference or COP21, which opens today in Paris. The Philippines is one of the several countries classified by experts to be at high risk of suffering from climate change. In recent years Filipinos have seen grievous devastation from extreme weather, including storm surges in secluded bays.”

I reckon that what is worst than our suffering the extreme weather changes due to climate change is that our government under Aquino has proven to be so incompetent in disaster preparedness. Sure, he may have appeared on nationwide TV on the night of November 7, 2013 the night before Super Typhoon “Yolanda” (International code name Haiyan) struck Central Visayas, notably, Samar, Leyte, Northern Cebu, and Northern Panay where PNoy proudly proclaimed that his government was ready for all eventualities, but in the end his government failed to respond to the devastation in Tacloban City and most of the typhoon devastated areas.

It is for this reason why I fully concur with the climate change activists that aside from our proactive stand against the effects of climate changes, we Filipinos should call for a systems changes in our political way of life. What we all saw that happened in Tacloban City when PNoy went to the devastated Tacloban City where his first act as president was to fire Philippine National Police Region 8 Director Senior Supt. Elmer Soria for telling the news media that the casualties of Yolanda could reach 10,000.

In short, what we saw Aquino telling us on the night before the storm was nothing but propaganda. So as not to embarrass his government, Aquino fired Soria because he did not want to hear about the huge casualties caused by the typhoon. So when the official body count done by the National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council neared the 8,000 figure, he ordered this agency to stop counting the dead and the missing, all in the name of propaganda. Even up to now, dead but rotting bodies can still surface in Tacloban two years after the storm struck.

So now that Aquino is in Paris, people are asking what was he really there for - make another meaningless speech? Surely by now the many foreign donor agencies who so generously responded to our call for aid already know about that highly embarrassing Commission on Audit report that more than P1 billion that was earmarked for the typhoon victims have remained in the banks still unspent.

Because of this COA report, foreign diplomats admitted that they decided not to channel another P15.77 billion in financial donations through the Philippine government and instead use their own networks of NGOs to provide relief and rehabilitation projects in the Yolanda devastated areas. Perhaps Aquino ought to make an apology to these donor nations for his failure to spend the money that they already sent to the Philippines.

Meanwhile, I was struck by what my fellow Philippine Star columnist Jarius Bondoc wrote in his column “Gotcha!” yesterday when he wrote, “Pres. Noynoy Aquino is committing the Philippines in today’s Paris talks on climate change a hefty 70% cut in carbon emissions by 2030. That is in exchange for foreign grants “for vulnerable countries.” Earth activists ask why PNoy is doing that when the country’s contribution to greenhouse gases is miniscule compared to the others.

It’s a mere one-third of one percent of global CHGs. Political analysts know the real score. And it’s spelled DAP, because akin to the Presidential pork barrel Disbursement Acceleration Program. Either the 7-% promised cut would cripple the economy, or is meant to be broken. But the foreign aid would be disbursed to all sorts of NGOs—fronts of the administration politicos—through Executive agencies.” So what we are seeing here is the hidden agenda of Pres. PNoy for speaking in the Climate Change forum in Paris. In short it is all about money, which when it is made available he would distribute it to his NGO friends. What a shame!

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For email responses to this article, write to [email protected] or [email protected]. His columns can be accessed through www.philstar.com.