BUSINESSES plan for a crisis. They usually have a Plan B. Unfortunately, when the Earth becomes uninhabitable, we cannot have a Plan B, as we do not have a Planet B.

Floods in Asia are more devastating, tornadoes in the West are stronger, and the heat index in the Philippines is at 47 degrees Celsius. Decades ago, scientists warned that these environmental problems would continue to worsen.

There are non-believers; some pay lip service, and others just do what they can to help preserve the environment. Still, others do an Alfred E. Neuman and seem to say, "What, me worry?"

Alfred E. Neuman is the fictitious mascot and cover boy of the American humor magazine Mad. His famous motto is "the intellectually incurious 'What, me worry?' This was changed for one issue to 'Yes, me worry!' after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979." (Wikipedia)

Worrisome issues

The "Blue and Green Journey" cited the environmental key issues that need to be resolved with urgency. Here are some, with my annotations:

– Pollution. Toxins like plastics, heavy metals, nitrates and gases released by factories, combustion of fossil fuels, acid rain, oil spills and industrial waste continue to pollute the Earth's air, water and soil. Agriculture uses chemical fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides.

– Global warming. This is caused by the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG), which increase temperatures that warm the oceans and lead to rising sea levels, melting of polar ice caps, flash floods and desertification. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls it "global boiling" to underscore the urgency.

– Overpopulation. The global birth rate was 1.7464 percent in 2023, 1.7668 percent in 2022, and 1.7873 percent in 2021. It declined by roughly 1.1 percent per year. Birth rates in the Philippines were 1.9579 percent in 2023 and 1.9778 percent in 2022, declining by roughly 1 percent every year. The more highly populated India has a lower birth rate increase than the Philippines at 0.81 percent in 2023, 0.68 percent in 2022, and 0.8 percent in 2021. As the population grows, the demand for food, water and fuel increases.

– Waste. Human, factory, nuclear and other forms of waste are dumped in landfills and in the rivers, seas and oceans. The Philippines leads the world in dumping plastics in the ocean — worse than most industrialized countries.

– Ocean acidification. The increasing production of carbon dioxide by humans in their factories, cars, homes and backyards causes the oceans' acidity to rise, thereby endangering, if not killing, marine life that humans consume.

– Loss of biodiversity. Human activities that create more carbon dioxide cause an imbalance in the ecosystem. This disturbs the natural process of pollination that improves our flora and destroys coral reefs that provide habitat, feeding, spawning and nursery grounds for fish.

– Deforestation. Logging for residential, industrial and commercial projects reduces the oxygen the trees produce, resulting in a rise in temperature and heavy rainfall.

– Ozone layer depletion. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the air cause a hole in the ozone layer that protects the earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation that heats the oceans and causes massive climate change.

– Acid rain. Sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and other pollutants in the atmosphere cause acid rain, which negatively affects humans, wildlife and aquatic species.

As the GHGs, CFCs and other pollutants in the atmosphere make the hole in the ozone layer bigger, the Sun's heat boils the oceans quicker and for longer periods. Hot ocean temperatures cause cyclones, typhoons and other weather disturbances. The Sun's unfiltered heat melts ice caps faster and causes extreme temperatures that lead to flooding in some areas and droughts in others.

There is a threshold at which the atmosphere can no longer take additional GHGs and CFCs created by human activity before the Earth can become uninhabitable.

Global warming

Life (human and wildlife) on Earth depends on energy from the Sun. Half this light energy passes through the air and clouds to the surface, where it is absorbed and radiated in the form of infrared heat. About 90 percent of this heat is absorbed by greenhouse gases and is re-radiated back to space.

Global warming, according to scientists, happens when the atmosphere full of greenhouse gases traps the heat radiating from Earth toward space. Before the onset of the First Industrial Revolution in the 1800s, the Earth was able to radiate most of the heat from the Sun back to space. At that time, the Earth's temperature was great for human life and the whole ecosystem. However, scientists observed that since the late 19th century, "the planet's average surface temperature has risen about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius), a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere and other human activities. Most of the warming occurred in the past 40 years." The years 2016 and 2020 were warmest, but 2023 was the world's warmest year.

Scientists say that in the last 800,000 years, there were eight cycles of ice ages and warmer periods. Most of the climate changes in the ancient past were attributed to very small variations in the Earth's orbit. Scientists also believe that the current warming trend is different — "it is clearly the result of human activities since the mid-1800s, and is proceeding at a rate not seen over many recent millennia. It is undeniable that human activities have produced the atmospheric gases that have trapped more of the Sun's energy in the Earth system. This extra energy has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land, and widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found evidence that confirms that "current warming is occurring roughly 10 times faster than the average rate of warming after an ice age. Carbon dioxide from human activities is increasing about 250 times faster than it did from natural sources after the last Ice Age."

Response

Many world leaders (e.g., former US vice president Al Gore) and young activists have long called for massive reforms to avert disaster that will be brought about by several environmental issues. The United Nations responded with the holding of the first annual Conference of the Parties (COP) of the UNFCCC in Berlin in March 1995.

From Nov. 30 to Dec. 13, 2023, the COP was convened for the 28th time in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Observers think there was a better result than in the past 27 COP meetings since 1995, where there were only token commitments to reduce GHG and CFC emissions and to transition to clean energy.

Ironically, at the COP28 meeting in a "petrostate" that extracts and supplies the world with fossil fuels, the governments seriously discussed limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels and preparing for future climate change.

More about fossil fuels in the next issue.

Ernie Cecilia is the chairman of the Human Capital Committee and the Publications Committee of the American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (AmCham); chairman of the Employers Confederation of the Philippines' (ECOP's) TWG on Labor and Social Policy Issues; and past president of the People Management Association of the Philippines (PMAP). He can be reached at erniececilia@gmail.com.