(2nd of two parts)
DIGOS CITY, Davao del Sur – The increasing need for energy globally has apparently also lead energy producers to a “fossil fuel addiction”, with coal energy becoming the “single biggest source of carbon emissions globally”, said the Philippines’ Climate Change Commission.
“Thirty percent of global carbon emissions come from coal power plants,” said Climate Change Commissioner Naderev Saño.
Saño said, however that this “addiction” and climate change “is a symptom of avarice or extreme greed”.
Saño said that “we need energy where it is needed when its needed” but he also believes that the world needs a “long term vision.”
He said that the world has been warned as early as 1865 of increasing carbon levels in the atmosphere but the “business as usual trajectory” of still using fossil fuels has not changed.
Saño became popular recently after he appeared in a video in the online networking site Youtube where he was crying while delivering his speech in the UN Climate Change Summit last December 2013.
“Al I can do is cry,” Saño adding that various commitments by countries like the Kyoto Protocol signed by UN member countries in 1997 has “failed.” He said the protocol “set specific quantitative requirements (to reduce their carbon emissions to) for specific countries.”
In news reports early this year, Canada withdrew from being a party to the protocol in 2012 while the United States signed it in 1995 but has yet to ratify it.
A study by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency shows that 2012 estimates put China in the top spot with annual emissions of 9,860,000 (in thousands of CO2 tonnes) while the United States is second with 5,190,000.
In that forum, Saño also lectured the audience, mostly composed of high school and college students, on the “basics” of climate change.
He said that destructive climate changes happened in the last 150 years, “because we have thickened the layers of gases in the atmosphere” and because of this “heat from the sun gets trapped instead of being bounced back to space leading to global warming.” He said the trapped heat of the sun influence the sea and the wind or the aspects of climate.
“Climate changes are natural in millions of years but in the last 100 years we have warmed up the planet faster than ever,” he said.
He said the global temperature is still to rise between two and six degrees over the next few years.
One of the victories in the negotiations during the Climate Summit was that member countries of the UN committed to decrease the rise of global temperature to a maximum of two degrees instead of four or six degrees.
“The average increase annually until 2012 is 0.85 degrees and is already very significant. Like, if the normal body temperature is 37, then .85 is very important,” Saño said.
He said that countries like the Philippines are directly affected.
Saño said that some scientists believes that the “storm surges in Tacloban (hit by Typhoon Yolanda) happened because the Philippine Sea has the highest rise in the world in 20 years which has risen 6 inches.”
He said that while carbon emissions have been largely produced by industrialized countries like the United States and China, the Philippines only contributes 0.03 percent.
He the other victory of their negotiations with developed countries is that developing countries can get compensation fund if they are hit by disasters caused by climate changes,
He said that this is important “as this is already an admission of accountability.”
Saño said, however that the Philippines must not be a “masochist” to what industrialized countries are currently doing in “exacerbating” climate change.
He said plans of building coal power plants in Mindanao as response to the energy crises “must be an emergency measure”.
However, First Vice President for Mindanao Affairs of Aboitiz Power Corporation Manuel Orig believes that “there is already available technology to control their plant’s emissions”.
But Saño believes that the country can “leap frog” or pursue development “while using clean energy sources which Mindanao “is rich with”.
A drawback though, would be the price of renewable. Saño admits that “clean energy technology is expensive as this is sold to poor countries like the Philippines”.
Saño also said that aside from climate change, “the country have many problems caused by not taking care of the environment”.
He said data from 2002 shows that only 20 percent left of forests is left in the country, only 3 percent of it are virgin forests. Only 4.3 percent of corals are left in good condition and the same study shows that 90 percent of fish stock are depleted. (John Rizle L. Saligumba/davaotoday.com)
