World Environment Day

by Janinah Jimmin M. Molina

What is World Environment Day?

World Environment Day (WED) was established by the UN General Assembly in 1972 to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment.This is commemorated every 5th of June.

This is one way by which the United Nations can raise environmental awareness among people in the society, as well as to gain political attention and action on environmental issues.

The agenda of WED are the following:

1. Give a human face to environmental issues;
2. Empower people to become active agents of sustainable and equitable development;
3. Promote an understanding that communities are pivotal to changing attitudes towards environmental issues;
4. Advocate partnership which will ensure all nations and peoples enjoy a safer and more prosperous future.

This year's WED theme is 'Your Planet Needs You-UNite to Combat Climate Change'. It views the need for countries to have a consensus on the crucial climate convention meeting in Copenhagen, later somewhere in December this year. In addition, it will also include battling poverty and forest management and improvements.

Mexico hosted this year’s celebration in the fight against climate change.The country is also a leading partner in UNEP's Billion Tree Campaign. It has spearheaded the pledging and planting of some 25 per cent of the trees under the campaign which is also supported by its president, Felipe Calderon. He said that the WED celebration will further underline Mexico's determination to manage natural resources and deal with the most demanding challenge of the 21st century – climate change.

Let's make everyday a World Environment Day! :)

When Earth is bigger than the universe

Like so many gay people, I look forward to the Miss Universe tilts each year with the religious fervor of a saint. Alright, maybe not as fervent as for Charmed or Survivor, but excited all the same. Amazingly enough, I am excited for the yearly Miss U as much as my sister is excited for UAAP. Talk about baliktaran.

Lately, I have been enamored with the Miss Earth pageants.


It has yet to approximate Miss U in terms of glamour, to say nothing of the prizes at stake. Nevertheless, Miss Earth is a joy to watch.

Part of my fervor for the Miss Earth pageant has to do with a little bit of ethnocentrism. You see, the company that owns Miss Earth is not based in America or Europe, but right here in the Philippines.

In other words, Miss Earth is a Philippine pageant. Carousel Productions, a Manila-based company led by Ramon Monzon and Lorraine Schuck, owns it.

Miss Earth prides itself as a reworking of the concept of beauty contests. It gets its candidates to promote environmental awareness and take part in preservation campaigns. On top of the customary beauty and brains, Miss Earth is clearly on the lookout for an environmentalist’s goodness.

(By promoting environmental awareness, Miss Earth probably meant longer question-and-answer portions. Just kidding.)

I had always thought the works of the winning Miss Earth contestant represent little more than symbolic efforts to protect the environment. Yet when I watched her grueling schedule on TV, I thought to myself, gee, they must really mean business. In fact, organizers put up the Miss Earth Foundation in 2004 to institutionalize the pageant’s environmental cause.

Since its first pageant in 2001, Miss Earth has risen to become one of the world’s “Big Four” beauty competitions. In fact, it now ranks the third-largest in the world, a factory of beauties to rival those in Miss Universe and Miss World.



My only reservation is that the Philippines has been host of the pageant since 2001. It has never been held outside the country. On the brighter side, such arrangement has showcased the country’s tourist spots for seven years in a row now. Still I am not impressed by the telecast at all, with its gazillions of ads and cheap titles.

The 2009 Miss Earth would be aired live from Boracay in November.

What Happened in The Happening

Myhowtimeflies!

Just over a year ago, I dragged my friend along to a screening of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening.



I had resolved to come to the cinemas in full support of this director’s bid for redemption, which was highly essential after the box-office bomb that was Lady In The Water.

Alas, not even a sage-acting Mark Whalberg could salvage Shyamalan’s reputation, which had gone on a downward trajectory since 2004’s The Village. The Happening’s critical notices read like those for Mariah Carey’s Glitter or Kevin Costner’s Waterworld.

In the end, Shyamalan’s greatest claims to fame remain 1999’s The Sixth Sense and 2002’s Signs, one of my favorite movies ever. Nevertheless, the box-office returns of The Happening were a tad better than Lady In The Water.

In spite of it all, I cut the film some slack. I mean, Shyamalan himself conceded The Happening should play out like a B movie. (spoiler ahead!) The film’s premise—that the earth’s atmosphere could turn people suicidal—was attractive enough without my sympathy for the director. Somehow, I enjoyed the film, down to James Newton Howard’s haunting score. But a Signs, it is not.

Running with gale force throughout the film was an undercurrent of environmentalism. Near the film’s end, two people on TV were shown debating whether or not the airborne “suicide virus” was nature’s way of avenging humankind’s excesses.

Other than that, Shyamalan never gave the cause of the film’s visceral, apocalyptic scenario. Yet it doesn’t take gusts of killer wind for moviegoers to extract a cautionary tale out of the film.

For all we know, by some mechanism from god-knows-where, the planet could turn against all its human inhabitants. It could decimate every one of us, not caring how large or small our carbon footprints are. In that case, Shyamalan may have made a horror film miles better than An Inconvenient Truth.

Understanding Sustainable Development

by: Janinah Jimmin M. Molina

Nowadays, the place we live in has become so modernized. Everything seems convenient with the technology fed to us that greatly satisfies our every need. Sounds great, right? Yet, are we aware of the perils our environment would be facing due to some harsh effects of modernization? This is where the context of sustainable development comes in.

What then is sustainable development?

Sustainable development is maintaining a delicate balance between the human need to improve lifestyles and feeling of well-being on one hand, and preserving natural resources and ecosystems, on which we and future generations depend. This means that we must adopt lifestyles and accept developments that respect nature. In addition to this, we are able to meet our everyday needs without compromising our environment.Our day-to-day activities and the natural world must have a stable relationship to not prevent the future generations from enjoying the quality of life that we have right now.

I personally believe that sustainable development must be inculcated in the minds of the people. We must be responsible enough to manage the risks of technology. We should meet essential needs for jobs, food, energy, water, and sanitation. Individual participation in political decisions and policies that affect our lives is very important, especially of those that concern our environment. This is definitely a must for achieving sustainable development. We must be careful in not exhausting our natural resources. Above all, we should learn to take part in conserving our planet.Indeed, humanity must share with each other and care for the Earth.

The Green Film Festival in the Philippines

By: Charise Go Bollozos

For the first time the Green Film Festival will be held here in the Philippines. The Green Film Festival is an international film festival staged yearly in different countries, and this year fortunately they chose the Philippines.

8 films will be shown that will tackle environment issues like climate change, scarcity of water, environmental decay and a lot of other things that will try to educate people on how to take care of the environment. Japan, France and the Netherlands are among the countries who contributed films to be shown. It will be screened in selected SM theatres in Luzon and the good thing about this is it’s free.

Since the aim of this Festival is to educate people most specially the young ones or the students regarding the environment the Environment Committee coordinated with the Department of Education to let students watch the films in different batches.

Unfortunately the film festival will only be shown in Luzon, I hope that the people in other parts of the Philippines will also get a chance to see these films. The Environment Committee and the Department of Education should have done something about this. They should have proposed that the films should be shown nationwide. There are still lots people in the rural areas that needs to be educated about the environment. Although it’s a good thing that people are more concerned and are now putting more importance in taking care of the environment. I commend the people behind these films and the ones organizing the festival for giving importance to nature and not just thinking about how to gain monetary profit. It’s a good sign. We should act before it’s already too late.

Giant Ocean Trash Vortex

By: Charise Go Bollozos

The world’s largest dump site is not found on land, but in the ocean. I came across an article about the ocean trash vortex while I was surfing the net. Out of curiosity I researched more about it.

I guess the ocean trash vortex speaks for itself already it is also known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It is located in the Central Pacific Ocean and it is estimated to be twice the size of Texas. The total area of Texas is 266,807 sq mi or 691,030 sq km. It is said to be the second largest state in the United States after Alaska. So just imagine how vast this garbage patch is. The patch is made up of plastics that have been thrown in the ocean and that has been trapped by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre. An oceanic gyre is a large scale system of rotating ocean currents.

This patch was for formed gradually over time. Researchers say that 80% of the pollution comes from land and the other 20% from ships at sea. It has been estimated that it will take about 5 years for the currents to carry the trash from the western coast of North America and about 2 years from the east coast of Asia.

There are 5 major oceanic gyres in the world. So this means that if we do not stop throwing our trash in the ocean, most specially plastics, it will not be a surprise that all these gyres will turn into garbage patches as well.

This is very horrifying and not to mention the hazard that this will do to our health. I just can’t imagine swimming in the beach and seeing a plastic island across. This is something that we should be taking seriously. I can’t imagine myself living in a world with no more beautiful beaches to swim with.

the pH Factor

by Janinah Jimmin M. Molina

We probably love when it rains, when raindrops fall on our faces or while we listen to our favorite song on the radio. Yet, are we also aware that it could be acid that falls on our head, carefully concealed in rain drops?

Acid rain is absolutely something we have to look out for.

If you think that you can easily detect acid rain from normal rain,I'm sorry to disappoint you guys but you can't figure out acid rain with your 5 senses. You will need to measure the acidity of the rain through chemical means. The rain's acidity is measured in terms of pH. According to the site, www.peer.tamu.edu., the pH measurement scale is based on logarithms, because the range of possible concentrations of acid is enormous, ranging from none to a whole lot of acid. The scale also runs in the other direction, to include measures for chemicals that have negative acidity (more properly called basic compounds). The pH scale ranges from 0 to 14, with the value of 7 being neutral (neither acid or base). Numbers from 0 to 7 are acid values and from 7 to 14 are basic values. Normal rain tends to have a pH value of about 5.5.

In addition, it was also stated in the site that the causes of the acid rain are the following:

*Power plants, automobiles, and other sources that burn fossil fuels

*SO2 and NOx released into the air; these compounds dissolve in and react with water in the air, making the water acid

*Rain, sleet, and snow carry the acid back to earth


Acid rain will greatly affect the environment. It was stated from the site previously mentioned, that acid rain eats away at the surface of buildings, especially those made of limestone or marble.Acid rain also affects the acidity of ponds, lakes, and rivers, causing their pH to drop.Some fish, such as bass and trout, are sensitive to changes in pH. Plant life is also damaged by acid rain. Crops, forests, and other plants grow more slowly.


So what shall we do then?

The suggested solutions to reducing acid rain are that we stop burning so much fossil fuel and use more gas-efficient vehicles. In addition, the use of alternate energy forms can also be promoted.

Let's help save our planet Earth!

The Perks of Cycling

by Janinah Jimmin M. Molina

In today's society, cars, jeepneys and the like are the worst pollutants. This is very much seen in cities of which Cagayan de Oro is one. Our polluted atmosphere does not only damage our environment but undeniably it also affects our health and well-being. In addition, the emission from vehicles contain harmful substances. An enormous amount of carbon dioxide will contribute to the degradation of our environment.

So,wanna help the environment? Climb on your bike! Let's set the trend on bicycles as the new cars.

I personally think that for biking to flourish in our communities is very much essential to saving our planet Earth. If you are riding a bicycle there is no combustion of fossil fuel as it would be if you were driving a car. Thus, you are not contributing to global warming.

As stated in the article titled 'Biking saves money and environment' by Lynne Tolman some things to also consider are the following:

* A 10-mile bike trip requires 350 calories of energy. The same trip in an average American car requires 18,600 calories of energy (about half a gallon of gasoline); or 9,200 calories per person by bus, according to the Worldwatch Institute.

* Bicycling costs approximately 13 cents to 15 cents per mile, according to a 1994 study by the Conservation Law Foundation, while driving with no passengers costs 54 cents to 94 cents per mile, depending on the city and the time of day. About 30 cents of that is the cost to the car owner alone, including insurance premiums, and the rest is borne by government (read: taxpayers) and society at large. These costs include building and maintaining roads and parking places, addressing the health and environmental effects of air pollution, and paying for accident consequences not covered by insurance.

* Auto emissions are the No. 1 cause of air pollution. Motor vehicles are responsible for 55 percent of cancer contaminants, greater than any other source, according to the League of American Bicyclists.

Therefore, to preserve our ecosystem riding a bicycle is definitely one great step. Perhaps, with a little change in our day to day activities we can play a role of protecting the Earth in which we live.