Restore Our Earth so We Can Live

 

There is great hope and enthusiasm among the youth for the restoration of the earth celebrating Earth Day on 22 April. They see the environmental destruction in all aspects of our lives- the air we breathe, the forest destruction, the polluted oceans, the climate change that is upon us and the pandemic- all a result of human neglect, greed and power play for riches and dominance of the Earth. This young generation wants it to change and are doing much to bring it about by advocating political change to the Green Platform for a healthy planet.

  

They are planning thousands of action events around the globe to demand that we change our lifestyles, habits, ways of living and working. They are dedicated to change the destructive industry, corrupt political systems and bad environmental conditions due to the changing climate that is harming them and the Earth.

   

We all must work to change our lives and restore our Earth because everyone should have an equal opportunity to survive and have healthy life of dignity and equality. Those greater ideals are far away but we can restore the Earth in small ways in the place where we live. Like recycling plastic and waste products, never waste food, plant organic vegetables and plant trees.  

 

The most vital and important need is to have a healthy, clean, pollution-free, smog-free atmospheres and clean air to breath. The air we breathe affects our lives, our blood, our brains and body and our ability for clear thinking. It is one of the most important environmental goals we must reach. Our health and that of the world’s children depend on it.

 

We humans are very unintelligent since we are poisoning ourselves. We are allowing national and multi-national industry to make billions of profits by producing electricity from dirty dangerous oil and coal-fired power plants. The  politicians and mighty moguls of industry tell us it is for our own good if we want our electric fans, air conditioners, heaters, lights and factories to run. How dull can we be, we with the big brains, if we allow this when there are clear sustainable alternatives? The youth that are rallying this Earth Day know it and demand change.

 

The politicians are generally corrupt and in cahoots and enjoy conspiracies with the tough tycoons of big business run by the oligarchs of industry. We have to have political action and vote for politicians with green environmental credentials. To restore the Earth is not just cleaning up the plastic waste and planting more trees, all great and important, but we have to change the politicians and they will change the source of producing electricity on which the world runs.

 

This basic intelligent thinking, planning and positive action is all possible and it is part of the new wave sweeping the globe with the young generation. It means we and the tycoons have to confess environmental sins, individually, nationally and globally and repent and do penance by changing our bad environmental habits.

 

We can and must change to good clean ways of living so as to undo the damage caused by the past generations and the present one. We must change and replace the destructive energy-producing ways to restore the Earth. The people must demand the politicians and industry to convert more quickly to renewable sources of energy and phase out fossil fuels, oil, gas, coal and nuclear plants.  We need to join the youth today in demanding these changes by their marches, activities and protests and positive actions this Earth Day, now on its 51st anniversary. The building of more wind turbines, solar panels, geothermal plants, wave and tide power and environmentally-safe hydropower is the goal.

 

Converting to electric-run vehicles sourced from renewable energy production is the way of the future. However, less flying, more walking and cycling and using trains are the best ways to travel to restore the earth. The burning of oil and coal is the most dangerous of all. They produce the most CO2 in the atmosphere, producing greenhouse gases causing climate change because of global warming and they are polluting the air we breathe. The Covid-19 pandemic stopped travel and restored a clean environment to many cities especially in China.

 

The coal industry is the worst of all for damaging the Earth. According to a report in N. Sönnichsen, Feb 2, 2021, “China has the highest installed capacity of coal power plants in the world. . . with a capacity of 1,042.9 gigawatts……the United States, which ranked second. China's carbon dioxide emissions from coal combustion reached 7.2 billion metric tons in 2019 - roughly 70 percent of the country's total emissions.

 

For a great nation to be truly great, admired, respected and emulated, China with its success in greatly alleviating poverty in fifty years and massive construction and production capacity of consumer products, has to have moral values and respect for human rights and respect for the Earth and quickly phase out their oppressive cruel polices of island-grabbing, human rights abuses and their coal plants. Then, China will lead the world.   

 

The most devastating result of a poisoned atmosphere from air pollution is felt everyday with the millions suffering breathing problems and with these underlying weakness, millions are dying, even hundreds of babies in Brazil, from Covid-19. Make no mistake about it. This pandemic is upon us like a dark cloud because of our lack of care of the natural world and protection of the earth’s wildlife and habitat of animals and birds. The unleashing of the various vicious viruses in recent years transferring from exotic and rare birds and animals when eaten, like bats or Panolin  has brought devastation and suffering and death to so many.

 

The positive planned action of youth worldwide on Earth Day to restore the Earth is inspiring. It begins with a global youth climate summit led by Earth Uprising, in collaboration with My Future, My Voice, OneMillionOfUs and hundreds of youth climate activists. We admire them. They are the hope for a clean, restored Earth.

The Earth, Where the Brave Are Buried

It was his idealism, his commitment to saving the earth and his love of nature that brought Gensun Agustin, 30, of Buguey, Cagayan, Northern Luzon, the Philippines, to an early and unnatural death at 4 PM last 1 March 2010. He was laid in his beloved earth, the earth that had given him life and for which he had fought and died as a campaigner for the protection of the environment. Earth Day ought to be a remembrance day for all those who have given their lives to save and protect the land and the people whose lives depend on it.

Gensun loved the sea, the sand and the mountains and when he saw the sand and the beaches of Buguey being seriously damaged by the extraction of huge volumes of black sand and the precious black magnetite, he acted to save them. The sands are being excavated and shipped in barges to waiting Korean ships off the Cagayan shore with the connivance of a powerful political clan in the province. We dare not speak or write the name lest another hail of bullets will end this writer’s life too as it did that of Gensun as he rode his motor bike home that fatal day. Two men riding another motorbike overtook him and opened fire. A beautiful mind, heart and spirit were wiped out, ended by the evil-doers in greedy pursuit of perversity and power.

Magnetite mining consists of scooping the black sand with bulldozers, payloads and trucks, or sometimes dug up by paid workers or villagers with spades and wheel barrows. Environmentalists fear that the extraction of magnetite, which binds the sand together, will undermine the entire beach structure and raising sea levels and raging typhoons that will cause massive erosion. They can see that with the beaches lowered the sea will rise inland flooding the rice fields with salt water and covering roads and destroying bridges, schools and houses.

There is something perverse happening when a very physical part of the Philippines itself, its beauty, its environment, its heritage is dug-up by a powerful family and shipped out to a foreign land to enrich a single family and the business people of Korea and when the protectors of the earth are shot and killed. The brave Mayor of Buguey, Ignacio Taruc, for whom Gensun worked, leads an anti-mining organization and has been threatened and harassed himself when he protested the destruction of the beaches and their fragile ecosystems.

Another brave anti-mining environmentalist Ricardo Ganad was brutally murdered in Oriental Mindoro last 10 February and many others throughout the Philippines. Since 2001, over 800 murders of human rights and environmental advocates have taken place. Many of them were connected to anti-mining campaigns.

Those most affected are the indigenous people who have retreated to their ancestral mountain domains as land grabbers encroached on their lowlands. These ingenious people struggle to survive and preserve their traditional way of life and customs. They are under increasing pressure by mining companies owned in many cases by wealthy colonial era families backed by foreign mining interests. The rich families control the Congress and make laws for their self-interest and their foreign cronies. The 1995 Mining Law is an example and they have military forces to impose their will. Unjust as the 1995 Mining Act is, condemned by the Philippine Bishops, and many international development organizations, mining is spreading into the ancestral lands and bulldozing over the rights of the Filipino people who suffer the landslides, pollution of rivers and coastal areas, the destructive logging, the loss of habitat and rain forest.

Well that's what we are up against on Earth day in the Philippines - the willful destruction of our beautiful coasts, fish stocks, hills, mountains and rivers with nothing but loss and dire poverty for most of the affected Filipinos. But take heart, there is a strong resistance but it is met with deadly forces. But please join and support the thousands of brave environmentalists in the Philippines and around the globe working, living, and dying for their just cause - saving and preserving the Earth. It’s the only one we've got.