When nature speaks

One delightful present I received last Christmas was “Ang Pagbabalik ng mga Bulaklak,” a set of botanical calendar and greeting cards from my esteemed former lady boss, whose friendship I cherish. Featuring frames of charming flower paintings by Emma O. Gutierrez, a watercolor artist from Antipolo, Rizal, I thought of how “Ang Pagbabalik…” fulfills a timely visual retreat from scenes of inferno, flood and harsh winter in places I treasure and call home.

Spring is still months away, yet the blooms-themed calendar evokes so much hope at a time when we are gripped with dramatic events brought about by climate change. Its refreshing presence on my desk, with important dates I had prominently marked in red, remind me of milestones in my life and of people dear to me, of key events in Philippine history and tasks I intend to undertake. “Ang Pagbabalik…” suggests redirection and welcoming – to appreciate what has come back and its abiding value to the present.

I was barely seven when our ancestral home burned down. As a child, seeing our home in embers was perhaps not as painful as it felt for my parents. The house was bequeathed to them as an inheritance and they saw the value of preserving it for us, the next generation. My mother specially, looked forward to the day when she would hand down the four-poster, solihiya bed adorned with skirting lovingly crocheted by her mother. Or the china cabinet filled with monogrammed bandehados, miniature cups for serving piping hot tablea and intricate silverware from my grandmother’s collection. My Lola saved them for us, her granddaughters. That day never came. Apart from four pieces of serving plates, mismatched cups and a 1927 narra round table that now accentuates our living room, all that was left with us, to my parents particularly, are tender memories of our life in our former home and how, as fire victims, we had arduously rebuilt our life from the cinders.

All these resound to me now as I watch and read heart wrenching stories of LA neighborhoods engulfed by the wildfires attributed to months-long drought. The biggest fire that hit my hometown over four decades ago pointed to human neglect. Although climate change was quite unheard of then, word also had it that strong winds fanned the blaze.

While LA scorched, New York started to freeze. An unprecedented one, long-time residents observe. At the height of the LA wildfires, my hometown was drenching in torrential rains that went on for days. If only Sorsogon’s oversupply of rainfall could douse off LA’s fires, a friend desperately imagined. Bridges collapsed, homes were either awash or tumbledown. Barangays that have never been flooded decades ago were knee-deep in water. Public opinion simmered and the blame game started. Blame it on relentless quarrying, on reclamation projects, on illegal logging and road widening projects all in the name of development. But who really is at fault?

“Politicians have argued. The summits have come and gone. But the truth is that climate change is already upon us,” declares “Postcards from a World on Fire,” an NY Times photo-video essay highlighting how climate change continues to reshape lives around the world. It features how forest fires in Australia and America, persistent monsoons in Southeast Asia or dried-up rivers in Africa destructively transform people’s lives. One planet, 193 countries, each with a myriad of climate-related concerns. And how did climate change affect our country? A video clip stunningly reveals: “The three strongest tropical cyclones to make landfall in world history hit the Philippines, all within the past decade.” I tremble at the thought of how it would be like 10 years hence.

Advocates have designed a thousand and one ways to battle climate change. From making corporations accountable for their impact on carbon footprints, to enhancing school curriculums, to taking to heart the global call to “reduce, reuse, recycle” and how these advocacies could meaningfully unite with Pope Francis’ Laudato Si, an encyclical to protect the environment. The opportunities are boundless.

Yale Climate Connections, an organization that informs and educates audiences all across the world about the “causes, consequences and solutions to climate change,” points to the role of every individual. YCC believes that we expand our impact when we get our neighbors, friends and family involved. The nonpartisan group suggests that our individual action, may it be in the area of home, food, travel, technology, community relationships, arts and culture, etc., become more effective when we spread the word. Talking about the engagements we’re undertaking can lead to transformational change. I see how this principle links with what our very own Nobel Peace Laureate Maria Ressa powerfully wrote in her book, “How to Stand Up to a Dictator” – that “we can rebuild our societies starting with what’s right in front of us: our areas of influence.”

In the aftermath of the fire that ruined our home, we have salvaged a handful of material belongings. But our parents, in their aching moments, have invested in us a lifelong awareness of “an attitude of gratitude.” We’re grateful to be unharmed, alive and the chance to move forward. This is also what travel writer and book author Pico Iyer implied in a New York Times essay about the LA inferno. Mr. Iyer vividly wrote how his house razed in the massive June 1990 Sta. Barbara, California fire, and how he hopes his friends around LA “can look forward, toward what they can change, more than backward, to what they can’t.” More poignantly, Mr. Iyer wishes that his friends “can cherish what they still have, which so often we take for granted and which is all we have to sustain us.”

Nature is speaking to us now in a voice resonant of a mother scolding her negligent children. And the stubbornly negligent children in us ought to listen. This time more attentively – and urgently.