Gay Environmentalism

I knew Melissa Etheridge first from watching encores of her 90s hit, “Come to My Window,” on music television. At a time when angst-ridden singers like Alanis Morissette and Jewel ruled the airwaves, I made enough room for Ms Etheridge in my album wish list.

Next, I knew her as the consummate gay activist—Etheridge is openly lesbian, happily married to actress Tammy Lynn Michaels. As with all successful gay people, Melissa truly struck a chord with me, although I haven’t gotten to buying any of her albums yet.

Now comes "I Need to Wake Up," a song Etheridge wrote for Al Gore’s environmental documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. It’s a perfectly pitched soundtrack to a perfectly hair-raising film.



“I Need to Wake Up” has all the trappings of a great Etheridge song, a folksy rock opus interspersed with the songstress’ subtle snarls. This time around, those snarls consist not of Sapphic paeans to women, but bombastic battle cries for the environment.

In 2007, it won the Oscar for Best Original Song, besting three nominations from Beyonce Knowles and Jennifer Hudson’s musical Dreamgirls. Etheridge’s win marks the first time a soundtrack to a documentary won an Oscar.

Accepting the award, she thanked Gore and memorably said:

Caring about the Earth is not Republican or Democrat. It's not red or blue, it's all green.

Quite apart from anything, Etheridge could never be faulted for hypocrisy; the woman simply puts word—or lyric, for that matter—into action. She went on the road in 2006 and rode biodiesel-fueled vehicles to all her gigs.

I do think that being gay begets environmentalism. In fighting for the ostracized and the disenfranchised, i.e. gays and lesbians, defending the environment comes as a natural consequence. Mother Nature, ever more oppressed in a world that ultimately revolves around straight men, could surely find an ally or two in us.

The Horror of the Greenhouse Effect

by Janinah Jimmin M. Molina

The greenhouse effect as defined by the American Heritage Dictionary is the phenomenon whereby the earth's atmosphere traps solar radiation, caused by the presence in the atmosphere of gases such as carbon dioxide, water vapor, and methane that allow incoming sunlight to pass through but absorb heat radiated back from the earth's surface. In other words, retention of solar radiation.

According to MSN Encarta, the greenhouse effect results from the interaction between sunlight and the layer of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that extends up to 100 km (60 mi) above Earth’s surface. Sunlight is composed of a range of radiant energies known as the solar spectrum, which includes visible light, infrared light, gamma rays, X rays, and ultraviolet light. When the Sun’s radiation reaches Earth’s atmosphere, some 25 percent of the energy is reflected back into space by clouds and other atmospheric particles. About 20 percent is absorbed in the atmosphere. For instance, gas molecules in the uppermost layers of the atmosphere absorb the Sun’s gamma rays and X rays. The Sun’s ultraviolet radiation is absorbed by the ozone layer, located 19 to 48 km (12 to 30 mi) above Earth’s surface.

For over a billion years, the greenhouse effect has warmed our planet. Today there is a great concern on the alteration of this natural process of which the causes are the different activities of humans. In turn, it can also harm us. The more we burn fossil fuels or engage in agricultural land clearing, the more gases are released into the air which include carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. These gases build up in the atmosphere and trap more heat near Earth’s surface.So what happens next? The Earth's climate is surely to become warmer than what naturally it is.

Picture yourself living on Earth and the weather is boiling hot. Sounds threatening, huh?

Green Bag It Is!

I went to SM super market a few days ago and I saw a big sign board just as I was about to enter the market premises. It says BYOB or Bring Your Own Bag every Wednesday.

Every Wednesday customers are asked to bring their own bag for their groceries whenever they shop at SM. If they do not have their own bags they can either buy the eco friendly bags also known as the green bag that SM is selling, which costs around Php 35. It may be a bit expensive for a bag but it’s reusable and what’s important is you are not adding pollution to the world. If you do not want to buy the green bag they will let you use the brown paper bag but if you insist in using plastic bags you have to buy them. The price of the plastic bag depends on the size.

I was so happy that finally, this giant corporation is doing something to save the world. Plastic bags are non - biodegradable, it takes about a 1000 years for it to decompose. Plastic bags can also harm animals in the ocean. Many animals mistake them for food, when they ingest the plastic bag the animals die and even after the animals die the plastic bag still remains intact. This means that it still lies around the ocean waiting for the next victim.

I surely do hope that other stores and super markets will follow and will stop using plastic bags.I hope the customers will cooperate too. After all, this is for our own good.


Charise Go Bollozos

To Recycle or Not

by Janinah Jimmin M. Molina

What is recycling?

"Recycling is the conversion of waste products into new materials, such as waste paper which can be converted into new paper goods.We can only say a product has been recycled when it has been purchased and used again." as stated by Andrew Roper in his article from the site www.webschool.org.uk.

It sounds worth doing, right? It seems like it is a very good alternative to just throwing materials after use.

It is beneficial in the sense that it slows the consumption of natural resources. In addition, it saves energy. It promotes scientific advancements in recyclable and biodegradable materials.It also helps to limit the amount of glass, paper and plastic that must be produced. Waste disposal costs are reduced as well as the raw material costs. How cool is that? Brilliant! Isn't it?

We are constantly bombarded with advocacies on recyling materials and the like. In turn, it makes us environmentally aware.

Yet, do you know that recycling has also certain disadvantages? Have we ever thought about that?

Here are some of the downsides of recycling:

1.) A significant percentage of items marked as recyclable end up trashed or burned anyway due to poor quality, contaminants, lack of resources able to handle that item in a specific region or recycling installation,etc.

2.)Establishment of low-quality jobs that include sifting through garbage to separate it, dealing with the toxins from the breakdown process, and other manual-intensive labor tasks;

3.)The recycling process itself produces pollutants consist of chemical stews when breaking down different products;

4.)Twice as many trucks on the road : those collecting garbage and recycled goods piled just cause more pollution.

So,what now? Should we recycle or not? Well,it's up to us to decide on the good and bad of recycling.

What do you think?

Planet in hot water—literally

OMFG.

In data released August 20 by the US National Climatic Data Center, the worldwide average for water temperature in July was…

(drum roll please)

…62.6 whopping degrees.

So pardon the expletive, for these findings represent the hottest month for ocean temperature in a century. It is even hotter than the average for the whole Twentieth Century. In comparison, the temperature in 1909 was just 59.3 degrees.

This bodes lots of things, other than giving natural Jacuzzis to inhabitants of cold countries. Warm ocean is a surefire portent of global warming.

I don’t know what to make of deniers of climate change at this late a point. More than searing temperatures inland, the warming of oceans is a foolproof symptom of a planet in heat. As scientists would put it, water requires manifold more energy to heat up than land. Worse, warmth doesn’t leave water for a loooong time.

Already, the warming oceans have caused coral reefs to undergo fatal bleaching. Of course, that would throw the biosphere’s food web, humans included, into anarchy. Usually, bleaching transpires months after excessive ocean heat. But that isn’t the case in Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Florida Keys.

In fact, The Gulf of Mexico’s temperature breaks mercury at 90 degrees. That means fiercer hurricanes for everyone. It so happens that hurricanes strengthen when they pass over warm waters, in the same way a car juices up at a gas station.

But the heat has taken its biggest toll on the Arctic Ocean, home to massive icebergs and ice sheets. The waters there have reportedly warmed by 10 degrees more than the average. Anyone could make the connection, I guess.

God, I feel sorry for this planet. We’re nearer the biblical lake of fire than most people would think.

The Troublesome Truth

by: Janinah Jimmin M. Molina

According to the site www.environmentpoint.com, approximately 14,000 people die every day because of waterborne diseases, primarily from untreated sewage in third-world countries, and at least 40% of the surface water bodies in the United States are too polluted to use for recreational activities such as swimming or fishing. It is estimated that 1.5 billion people do not have a safe drinking water source and almost two-thirds of the world could experience water shortages by 2025.

Can you handle this? Imagine what would happen to us in the years to come. We are very much aware of the fact that water is indeed essential to human life, yet we disregard this by contaminating our oceans, lakes and rivers. Aside from certain organisms dying off at an alarming rate, the water we drink everyday has also become greatly affected. In turn, our health also becomes at stake due to pollution of water. This would give rise to more complicated problems that would definitely destroy our well-being.

To combat water pollution, we have to be part of the solution itself. Obviously, this issue is not just a concern of environmental departments around the globe but rather our planet earth and all the living things which reside in it.

Thus, we all have to be responsible and be involved in preventing water pollution. As the saying goes, prevention is better than cure. Right?

Garbage in Baywalk

Garbage was all over Baywalk last August 6 because of the big waves in Manila bay. It was a horrendous site to see. It took 6 dump truck loads to clean up the whole mess.

This is not something new, the garbage in Manila bay has been a problem for quite some time now. Although the government has made great efforts to beautify the shore by putting up the baywalk , they weren’t able to solve the problem with regards to the trash in Manila bay.

What happened last August 6 is somewhat a warning that if we continue to abuse and pollute the ocean it will come back to haunt us. We Filipinos are all guilty of being litterbugs in one way or another. We are so used of having to pay other people to clean up our mess. In other countries most especially in the more developed ones they are disciplined with regards to proper trash disposal. You can not just throw trash anywhere because you’ll get fined.

We Filipinos still do not see the bigger picture, we still do not see the danger and the price that we are going to pay if we would not stop our habits. What happened in Manila is just a warning to us that if we would not stop throwing our trash in the ocean somehow the ocean will throw it back to us. I sure hope that the Filipinos learned something from what happened before it is too late. The change should start from each and everyone.


Charise Go Bollozos

Rare! Environment destroyer admits fault

Exxon Mobil Corp. has recently pleaded guilty to killing birds whose migratory paths happened to be right smack over the oil company's mucky production facilities in the American Midwest.

Of course, it should pay the fines of $600,000; this sum is just loose change for one of the world's largest corporations. Heck, it is already the world's biggest, its wealth built on the backs of gas-guzzling cars all over the world.

Big deal, you might say; Exxon killed only 85 migratory birds. But it was enough to throw the food chain for a loop.

What this shows, ultimately, is a company ready for penitence. Exxon has veritably built a new model for environmental consciousness. And for that, I applaud it.



Gerard de la Cruz

Toy Soldiers

This is long overdue.

According to the The New York Times, the unequivocal rate of climate change in the United States would finally compel intervention by the military. The report cites high-ranking analysts from the Pentagon, among other sources.

Not that they haven't already. Or that they would come out shooting their ammunition against carbon gases, but the military is clearly taking stock of an ominous foe. As it stands, the upshots of global warming i.e. rising seas, fiercer hurricanes, drier drought, more emaciating famine, and deadlier disease can make geopolitical upheavals, the likes of which have never been seen before.

In fact, global warming is hitting the US soldier in the face. In the same report, violent storms are threatening several naval stations across the country.

It's all very apocalyptic. Climate change has all-too real consequences. The fact that the most powerful nation in the world is mobilizing its soldiers is a very grave portent of things to come.

Here's hoping the greater use of arms won't put democracy on the line. Climate change has every way of making severe changes on governments the world over. We've heard nations warring over oil; there's no reason they wouldn't over depleted oxygen.

Glaciers are not the only ones melting nowadays, if one thinks about it. As they drift away to oblivion, people's sense of security are also melting and plunging into an ocean of nothingness.

Stuff In the Air

by: Janinah Jimmin M. Molina

Each time we breathe, we risk inhaling dangerous chemicals that have found their way into the air.

Air pollution contains dangerous substances that can be either in the form of gases or particles. Buildings are mostly immersed with pollutants causing indoor pollution and lasts for a long time.

Nature and humans are the sources of air pollution. The majority of pollutants released into the air are caused by humans since we have been generating pollution. Air pollution has been a problem throughout times gone by.

The consequences of air pollution are diverse and profuse. The health of human beings can be at stake and even our ecosystems can be severely damaged. Imagine that?

Air pollution travels fast through our atmosphere. Thus, air pollution is a global problem and has been the area under discussion of worldwide cooperation and conflict.

Nowadays, some regions suffer more air pollution than others, especially cities with a vast numbers of automobiles, jeepneys and the like or those that use great quantities of coal often experience most sternly from problems brought about by air pollution.

So why not help combat air pollution by starting with ourselves? This is not a government concern but rather it is the responsibility of every individual to help control the worsening air pollution that our mother Earth is experiencing now. At home and at work, turn off the lights when not needed; change the light bulbs into low power ratings with high efficiency; dispose old appliances or household materials with aerosols properly; walk instead of using the car when going to a place only a block away; and let your school children ride in a school bus rather than sending them to school with the family car, and the list goes on.

There are plenty of ways that we can contribute in the preservation of our environment. Air pollution is an important matter, which every individual should be concerned about if we want to have a better and healthy life for ourselves and the generations to come.

It’s getting hot in here!

Sure we have been talking about global warming, thinning of the ozone layer, climate change, melting of the snowcaps and other things that are too scary to think about if they happen. These are things that we take for granted most of time. We fail to realize that it is indeed something that we should take seriously. Living in a third world country this concern has not been given that much attention. We tend to ignore the deafening campaigns of the more developed countries to do something about global warming.
Well I guess its time we do something about it. For the months weeks it has been raining so hard here in our city. It’s like we have been hit by a typhoon or something because the wind is also very strong. Of course we expected it already because the rainy season here in our country usually starts in June but the thing is the rain already started pouring down since May. It is quite obvious that we are already experiencing a climate change. What I am most concerned about is the very hot weather that we have been experiencing for the past few days. I know that we are a tropical country and it is quite normal to experience hot days but the heat now is different. It seeps into your skin. It’s like we are inside an oven. It scares me, because now I realize that we are really experiencing global warming. Climate change is already very evident nowadays. Whenever I go to Manila I always complain to very hot weather that they have there. The heat there is quite different from what we experience here, of course we do still have trees here and we are not in the middle of a concrete forest but what we experienced lately really gave made me realize that if we do not do something about our planet, if we do not go out of our way to stop and if possible repair the damage that we have done I am not going to be surprised if a few years from now we will have the climate of Africa.



Charise Bollozos