Living Without Destructive Plastic

 

Plastic was and is a magical invention. It is a material based on oil and has thousands of excellent and life-saving uses. In the medical world, in construction, in tool-making, manufacturing of phones and other gadgets, cars, household items, furniture and almost everything you see has plastic in it. Our modern world depends on plastic to sustain its present lifestyle. But that lifestyle built on the plastic revolution has its dangerous dark side. Everything we humans use and discard can have dire consequences for the planet. Garbage is everywhere and it is damaging our health. Plastic pollution is destroying many creatures and poisoning our air and rivers and oceans and people don’t seem to care.

 

It is dangerous to health because it is a destructive chemical-based pollutant and it is the one-time use of disposable plastic stuff that is so dangerous and damaging to our lives, our health, our environment. The fish we eat have plastic in them because the vast oceans are filling up with discarded plastic. If you Google “Plastic Pollution in Manila” you will get a sight that will make you cry or angry. You will see photos of the esteros, canals, rivers and Manila Bay choked with millions of discarded plastic bottles, cups, straws, bags, nets and wrappings. Eventually some drifts into the far ocean.

 

These single-use plastic items make up 40 percent of all annual plastic production worldwide. They are with us forever, you might say, and will not disintegrate for about 400 years. The millions of tons of floating plastic will eventually join the great Pacific garbage patch that covers a surface area that is 1.6 million square kilometers. That is three times the size of France. It is swirling in ocean currents between California and Hawaii and elsewhere. There are many other lesser known floating garbage islands where our discarded single-use plastics end up.

 

The ocean currents sweep up the floating plastic in gyre regions as they are called. An estimated 297 million tons of plastic is out there on the ocean currents distributed as follows: in the North Pacific (36 percent), Indian Ocean (22 percent), North Atlantic (21 percent), South Pacific (8 percent) and the South Atlantic (4.5 percent). The Mediterranean Sea has 8.5 percent. We humans sure dirty our own planet.

 

What is most dangerous to all living creatures in the short and long term is the damage to our health from micro-plastics. The plastic bottles, cups, straws and bags eventually breakdown into tiny micro-plastic particles and even Nano-plastics. A massive eight million tonnes every year float into the oceans and tons of plastic dust are blown into the atmosphere from the tons of plastic in open pit garbage dumps. We breathe the dust into our lungs. It may be necessary to always wear a mask.

 

The micro-plastics get into everything- our throats, lungs and stomachs- and they harm wildlife, too. Fish are found dead their stomachs filled with plastic bags. Tests have shown micro plastics are in many caught fish on our dinner tables. I have gone vegetarian.

Birds are dying by the thousands from eating plastic items. Penguins, albatrosses and many sea gulls have died as a result of eating floating or submerged plastics. Thousands of dolphins, sharks, whales and turtles are caught in the drifting discarded plastic fishing nets of the commercial fishing industry. What incredible damage we are doing to wild nature, ourselves and our children by such irresponsible I-don’t-care behaviour.

 

Discarded one-use-plastic is a culture of death and destruction. Researchers have found items from almost every continent floating in the garbage patch and cast up on remote Pacific islands. They have been found in the deepest part of the ocean to the highest point on earth, Mount Everest, no less. Europe and the United States have their garbage and plastic disposable and recycling challenges yet Asia is the source of most of the plastic garbage.

The plastic garbage monster is coming not only from the Pasig in Manila where most of it stays in coastal waters but mostly it is coming down the 5 major Chinese rivers and also from the Nile in Egypt, the Ganges in India, the Indus in Pakistan, the Niger in Africa and the Mekong River that passes through Laos, Thailand and Cambodia.

 

There is one way to solve this: a worldwide ban on single use plastics like plastic bags, cups, bottles, drinking straws stir-sticks, cutlery and food containers. There are laws in place in some countries banning plastic bags. In the Subic Bay Freeport Zone, plastic bags are banned in stores and super markets. More restrictions are coming in the US and the EU but not soon enough. The Philippines needs such laws to save our beautiful islands and rivers and beaches. Burying the garbage in the sand is not the answer.

 

Beach and environmental clean ups are good and we see youth cleaning up other people's dirty environmental mess that is destroying the ecology. Speeches are important but action is more effective. It will be so much better to prevent the plastic pollution by passing and implementing laws to get all stores, supermarkets, and food establishments to use only recyclable bio-gradable packaging and wrapping.

 

Each of us can do our part. We can always have your own reusable water bottle, demand restaurants give a glass, ceramic or paper cup and paper straw and refuse to order if they use plastic. Look for bio-degradable materials. We can bring a shopping bag to the supermarket and never use plastic that is not biodegradable. At home or in the office, we separate all discarded materials and make a weekly trip to the recycling bins. If we all did these things, it would make a big difference. Let’s make a start. But we have to persuade government to act and pass stricter laws to end the plastic pollution in the Philippines and elsewhere.

Protecting the Planet

Have you ever seen the sun set upon the sea,

the migrating birds fly in formation proud?

Have you ever seen the mighty forest and heard the birds sing clear and loud?

Have you seen the flowers in the meadows and the fields that provide the nectar for the bee, That gives the honey in the hive hanging from the tree?

Have you ever seen the dolphins race across the ocean wave,

The mighty whales that swim the oceans strong and brave?

A breathless sight of beauty you will ever see

If we will just allow them to live and to be.

We inhabit a most amazing planet filled with life forms and hundreds of thousands of amazing creatures, animals, birds, insects, and fish. In the natural world, the living forests and plants and oceans make up a living, evolving integrated planet with us humans. We the creatures that have a developed brain, conscientious, knowing and with awareness of self and all that is around us in the environment. have the responsibility to preserve it.

We are the ones that can admire, appreciate, and wonder at the beauty of the environment and the universe. We are the thinking consciousness of the universe. We can know good and bad and we have unique free will to choose one or the other. That is what makes us human and different from other creatures we share life with on this climate-sensitive planet.

We humans are changing it dramatically by the lifestyles that we have chosen and the industrial machines and methods we have created to maintain that lifestyle. Our way of living together, travelling, warming and cooling ourselves, producing our food and disposing off the material we manufacture is affecting the environment and the planet itself.

We humans are industrious, inventive, creative, intelligent, kindly, loving creatures to each other and the ecology and environment but many of us are also something else. Many of our species have chosen to act on their lower, thoughtless basic instincts to possess, control, dominate and subjugate others to achieve and satisfy desires and appetites. They impact the human environment. They act with violence and other negative impulses born perhaps from childhood neglect, abuse, deprivation or the evil example of other influencers. They act in anger with violence against the human environment, the human community, inflicting hurt and pain on others.

Some become intoxicated with power and destructive tendencies over their communities. They persecute and kill those that refuse to be subjugated, dominated and abused. These are the tyrants and dictators, and not only do they kill and maim and destroy those who do not approve of them, they attack the environment. Their self-serving policies expand industrial exploitation of the environment and exploit the natural resources. Their goal is to increase their personal wealth and political power and so all creatures, the environment and the planet greatly suffer. They are the humans that allow big and small corporations to destroy the forests and the oceans and create a destructive industrial juggernaut that leaves disorganized citizens divided and powerless.

We must not be silenced or intimidated. We must stand for the earth, act to stop the destruction on a political scale, on a community level and in our personal capacity. When people unite and speak with one voice, they have power to change the world and corrupt politicians unless they are shot and massacred. The environmental destruction by industry that is causing climate change by high levels of CO2 emissions has to be challenged .They cause climate fluctuations that damage sustainable food production and the natural world. Politicians in conspiracy with the industrial leaders, driven by greed, these mighty money moguls, are foremost in destroying the planet.

Australia is an example of government policy supporting the coal extraction industry. It is the biggest exporter of coal in the world. The emissions of the coal they export is equal to 3.3 percent of global emissions. Added to domestically-produced emissions of CO2, then Australia contributes 4.8 percent of world emissions and is a major contributor to dangerous climate change. If we add the emissions for natural gas exports, it is even a bigger footprint and a bigger responsibility. The super cold snap in Australia of late is a direct result of climate change, it seems.

The Australian political industrial complex has to be held accountable and drastically change direction to protect the environment. That is a decision that only the Australian people can make by voting into power a green, environmental-friendly government. Australia is now the sixth biggest polluter of the environment after China, the United States, Russia, India and Indonesia. Australia and all the high CO2 emissions producing countries should choose to obey the principle, “Do no Harm.” However, since basic instincts of greed, money and power are dominating the ruling elites and political establishments of these countries, there is no place for principles of caring and compassion for the people and the planet.

There is good news however. The global awareness of the damage and negative effects of climate change has business and industry concerned and committed to change. A survey by Deloitte in recent months shows that 80 percent of business and corporate executives have expressed serious concern about the impact of climate change and are planning to take mitigating action to address it. But will they?

The Climate Check Report surveyed 750 executives last January and February 2021 and found that 30 percent of them said that climate change is affecting their businesses causing a scarcity of resources and supply chain problems. Self-interest may bring concern for the environment. Political awareness building and peaceful social activism is having a positive effect. School children in Australia have taken to the streets to protest against coal production. Greta Thunberg is leading a global movement to stop industry burning fossil fuels and to build renewable energy sources. Now 18 years old, she blasts the empty promises of world leaders who promise much but do nothing positive but allow the destruction of the Amazon rain forests.

If we want to continue to admire the forests, the dolphins, the birds and creatures of the planet, we have to preserve and protect it with all our strength. 

 

The Oceans Under Serious Threat

The island of Palawan in the Philippines is considered an environmental haven of cleanliness and beauty. But what was discovered recently in the fish market of Puerto Princesa- a dorado fish, one of many they say, with a belly full of plastic wastes such as bottle caps, candy wrappers and a yellow plastic spoon- shocked the customers in the fish market. Other fish vendors said they frequently find similar plastic trash in the fish.

Besides pollution, there are big losses to small-scale fishers in coastal communities in recent years due to the proliferation of commercial fishing fleets and factory ships of other nations. Not only is China grabbing the fishing grounds of the Philippines and other Southeast Asian nations but huge fishing fleets run by corporations dominate the ocean. They are destroying the oceans by irresponsible “bottom trawling” and many fish species are needlessly killed. The ships drag huge nets along the ocean floor destroying everything in their paths, destroying corals and ecosystems and habitats of fish. The commercial fishing industry kills between 0.97 and 1.97 trillion wild fish worldwide every year. This is called “by-catch” and “accidental take.”

For example, every hour 30,000 sharks are killed. That is 50 to 70 million sharks every year, hauled on board, fins cut off and they are thrown back to die, all to delight diners with shark fin soup. This is barbaric attack against nature and unsustainable. The shark is a magnificent creature, evolved after millions of years of evolution into the perfect ocean hunter and essential to maintaining balance in the ocean’s wildlife. This mass killing has caused a 70 percent decline in shark populations globally over the past 50 years, making them an endangered species.

Having watched the well-made and convincing documentary on the state of our oceans by researcher Ali Tabrizi called Seaspiracy shown on Netflix and excerpts on YouTube, we can see how the oceans are under threat. It has caused many people to question the methods of the commercial fishing industry that result into over-fishing the oceans.

What is revealed is so shocking. It is enough to cause people to stop eating fish and turning to organic plant-based food, this writer among them. We need to stop eating so much meat and fish to save the planet and the oceans. The oceans are vital to life on earth as they make up 71 percent of the planet’s surface. They are the greatest absorbers of CO2.

Phytoplanktons are the micro-organisms, the microscopic plants, that make up the basic food  of the ocean’s food chain and they are rapidly diminishing. Forty percent has been lost since the 1950s, studies show. This is due to the warming of the oceans due to climate change and global warming. These micro-organisms are responsible for absorbing CO2 and giving off oxygen for us and the animals to breath. They are more effective than all the trees on the planet and now they are threatened by human activity. We, humans, refuse to save ourselves and stop burning coal, oil and everything that burns. We are the world’s most dangerous arsonists.

The human species, many of whom are ignorant, are destroying the planet that supports us, giving us the air we breathe and the food we eat. The rain forests are being destroyed and  global warming due to human activity is killing off the vital life sustaining phytoplanktons that could save us by absorbing CO2. In the documentary, they quote an IMF report that says, “We calculate that this (phytoplankton)is equivalent to the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) captured by 1.70 trillion trees- four Amazon forests’ worth.”

The fishing industry has another huge negative impact on the planet and the oceans- the discarded and lost nets. Likely, millions of tons of nets are floating in the oceans entangling dolphins, whales and thousands of other sea creatures including turtles. They wash up on beaches everywhere. According to Greenpeace, “More than 640,000 tonnes of nets, lines, pots and traps used in commercial fishing are dumped and discarded in the sea every year, the same weight as 55,000 double-decker buses.”

“We hear a lot about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP). . . 46 percent of it is discarded fishing nets, which are far more dangerous for marine life than our plastic straws,” says environmentalist George Monbiot, a contributor to the documentary. Plastic straws are only 0.003 percent of the garbage in the ocean, We have to do more than ban plastic straws.

Every fishing boat must be held accountable for their missing fishing gear. Another danger to the oceans and all the fish there is longline fishing. These are long fishing lines that carry hundreds of hooks with bait and they catch everything indiscriminately. Turtles, dolphins, whales and even sea birds get caught. The fish caught are mostly by-catch, mentioned above, and are thrown back dead. The hooks and lines are frequently lost and left to float underwater for years and continue killing and maiming all sea creatures.

The strongest defenders of the so-called “sustainable” fishing industry are some NGOs that promote sustainable fishing. Some claim that the canned tuna we see on supermarket shelves are “dolphin-safe.” The documentary Seaspiricy showed that in most cases the canned tuna was not dolphin-safe. Many of the NGOs get their funds from the commercial fishing industry and cannot be critical of the industry or be unbiased.

I used to think that fish farming was the best answer to the rape of the oceans. But this, too, has many problems. The fish packed in underwater cages develop diseases and antibiotics are used that can affect the consumer. Sea lice is a big problem in fish farms and dangerous chemicals (several are banned) are needed to control it. So the farmed fish are also of low quality due to the feeds or pellets they are fed.

Again, it is greed that causes the overfishing, pollution, the plastic and chemicals poured into our oceans that is destroying our planet. We need greater awareness widespread effective law enforcement on the sea and a moral conscience to stop the abuse and destructive fishing.

The Road To Extinction

What a happy world it would be if all its living species lived in harmony- plants, animals and humans. It’s an utopian dream, some say, impossible in this world of modern urban living, say others. It does happen. In the last remaining forests of the Amazon, the indigenous people have lived for centuries in isolation and in close dependency in harmony with nature. Now they, together with the plants and animals, are being driven to extinction.

The rain forests are being burnt, the wild animals are dying with less habitat and food and the indigenous tribal people are being increasingly infected with the diseases of intruders, the most recent is Covid-19. The natural world is being destroyed. The forests are burnt replaced with palm trees, beef cattle and soya beans. We humans are a ferocious species. Greedy for profit, the corporations mine and excavate the minerals, cut and haul the logs, capture and trade the wild animals, over-fish the oceans and pollute the air. We are dangerously overheating the planet with poisonous greenhouse gases. That temperature increase is killing animal species, damaging sea corals and causing raging bush fires around the globe where animals die. We must understand the cause and act to stop it.

The first place to look is at human nature. Our species has evolved rapidly and unpredictably to the point where we have taken over the earth. The number of wild animals on the earth have been reduced by half since 1970 and the human population has doubled. As a result, animals are becoming extinct 100 times faster. Our expanding population is cutting and destroying the forests, killing and eating the animals and, in the process, provoking and inviting deadly killer viruses to jump from one animal species to humans.

We had Sars, Ebola, HiIV and now Covid-19 to mention a few and more to come. Call it the deadly embrace of nature. Another more deadly virus will attack for which we cannot develop a vaccine and could face extinction ourselves.

It all began with oil, fossil fuels, fertilizers, pesticides and corporate agriculture. Cheaper food in abundance. Then, the scientific community made great discoveries in antibiotics and vaccines. Life expectancy zoomed from 45 to 70 years and the Green Revolution produced more food and populations grew but most remained poor.

In 1898, when the Philippines fought Spanish and then America forces for independence the population was about seven million people scattered over the islands. Then 102 years later, by the year 2000, it was 76 million people. According to the UN projection report by the year 2050, it will be 127 million. Presently, the population of the Philippines is 110 million. Will the nation be able to feed itself? Obviously not. It imports most of its rice and has a semi-starving population of impoverished slum and rural dwellers of 16 million people, if not more. With millions of educated Filipinos migrating and working abroad the future is bleak with social unrest and political turmoil brewing. This Philippine population growth is unsustainable and should it continue at this rate, it would be a doubling of the population every 35 years. That means a population of 152 million in the year 2035 and 304 million by the year 2070. The Philippines is just one example in a global catastrophe of ecological destruction because of uncontrolled population growth in the developing world. There is now only 3 percent of the Philippine primeval rain forest left. In 1900, there was 70 percent forest coverage of the archipelago. The forest dwelling indigenous people of the Philippines are now neglected, abandoned subsistence farmers on bare mountains denuded by corporations owned by local elite and foreign corporations. An ecological crime of gigantic proportions and a lost and stolen natural resource and heritage.

The world population is at present seven billion people, most are in China and India. The world population will continue to increase to 9 billion by 2045, according to UN projections. The continent of Africa where the great remaining rain forests and most of the world’s species of animals live face a very precarious uncertain future and extinction is ongoing at present. There was about 230 million African people in 1950. They made up nine percent of the world population but in 60 years, by 2010, that number had grown to one billion. That was then 15 percent of the world’s population.

By 2050, Africans will make up 24 percent of the world population. This is 2.2 billion people, the UN says. Every 12 to 15 years, we humans add one billion more humans to the earth. They have to live, work, eat, procreate and survive. That demands more land, housing, farming, chemicals and water. Population growth has a huge impact on the ecology and the animals in Africa and the Amazon are losing their habitat and are dying out.

In Africa, about 60 percent of the population is below 25 years of age. There is high unemployment, inequality, poverty, social unrest, corruption and political conflict. These are driving the youth to migrate. Thousands are streaming toward Europe in the hope of a better life. Western countries are absorbing many and some nations are fast becoming multi-cultural and multi-racial. Racists want to stop them. The European population growth, presently stagnant, will soon start growing because of the young migrants.

Climate change, driven by western industrialization, is heating the globe with greenhouse gases. That is drying up once lush African grass lands, rivers are drying out leaving dying reptiles and animals. What is left alive are being hunted to extinction for their tusks and horns or captured and sold internationally to corrupt collectors of wildlife.

The hope for the remaining forests and the natural world is the international movement to save the planet, to reduce global warming and to preserve the environment vital for our survival. We can all join in by working for a clean organic environment, campaigning and speaking out for each other and the animals and creatures with whom we share the earth.

Greenland Is Melting, Islands Have Disappeared

I loathe the cold and love the warm. Who doesn’t? I grew up in Ireland where spring and winter was always very cold. In the 1950’s central heating was rare. We stayed warm by burning coal in open grates and used kerosene oil in a heater. Many the nights, we children huddled around the coal fire or heater trying to stay warm doing our homework. We suffered painful chilblains, itching and swelling of the toes due to the cold.

We burnt coal and oil, fossil fuels and never knew we were adding CO2 gas to the atmosphere and warming up the planet. Our family’s contribution to global warming was minuscule, but with millions of homes, factories and furnaces, trains and tractors, power stations and ships and vehicles all over the world burning these fuels the CO2 accumulated over the past two hundred years and the planet has got steadily warmer.

Many people refuse to believe the truth of science and continue to burn coal and oil in power stations and vehicles. This pumps more CO2 into the atmosphere that continues to create a thick warm blanket around the earth. The sun beats down and makes the planet like a hot oven or a greenhouse from which the heat cannot escape because of the greenhouse gases. We are, you could say, cooking ourselves to death like lobsters in the cooking pot.

In recent years scorching heat waves have killed thousands of people. In 2019 alone 1,500 people died in France from the heat and many more elsewhere. The warm weather is enticing more people to go out of their safe homes to visit the cooler beaches, resorts and parks and they are getting infected with Coronavirus.

Plants, birds and nature are responding as the climate gradually warms and changes and more species are in danger of extinction. We humans are destroying nature and changing the planet with our irresponsible lifestyles. We must change to renewable energy sources more quickly and save the planet and ourselves and the next generation.

In the Philippines where I am living since 1996 I can really feel and notice how the climate has changed since I first arrived. There are higher temperatures, stronger more frequent typhoons, landslides, loss of harvests, less water resources and the spread of diseases. The deforestation of the past fifty years as left only about three percent of the original rain forest. Trees are still being felled by Irresponsible mining, palm oil plantations and illegal loggers. That is accelerating the global warming.

Those Filipino heroes defending nature and the environment are being killed, 46 were murdered in recent years. The Indigenous people are suffering land grabbing, are branded as subversive criminals and many are killed as they defend their environments and ancestral lands. The multinational corporations are in cahoots with local and national elite politicians. They are behind the environmental injustice and destruction.

Hundreds of Aeta indigenous people were evacuated recently in San Marcelino, Zambales due to military action against suspected communist rebels. At Preda Foundation we responded and hurried to bring food relief packs to 177 people. Eighty of them are members of our Aeta organic farmers association from whom we buy mangos at high Fair-Trade prices and share cash bonus and implement community projects with them. They plant thousands of mango tree saplings annually.

The melting of the ice caps and Greenland is raising sea levels that are sinking islands and will flood coastal communities in the future. Low lying Manila will be inundated in the future. The inhabitants of the Carteret Islands of Papua New Guinea were evacuated and transferred to Bougainville Island. The same is happening in Micronesia and the Solomon Island once Pacific Ocean paradises have become the watery graves of departed communities.

However, the rapid melting of Greenland is like ice cream in a microwave. The extremely rapid melt there is causing concern around the world, “What we’re seeing in Greenland is exceptional. It’s a wakeup call,” Penn State climatologist Luke Trusel said.

In the latest heatwave this last July 2020 it was estimated that as much as 12 billion tons of ice melted in Greenland. This August 2020 more than 60% of Greenland’s surface ice was calculated to be melting in temperatures of 25 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit. So we can expect that many more low lying atolls and islands are due to meet a watery end.

The global warming is melting the perma-frost in Canada and Siberia and that has already released millions of tons of methane gas into the atmospheres. Methane is more a deadly greenhouse gas than CO2, it has a global warming potential (GWP) 84 times greater than CO2. Add to this the methane released by the billions of cattle in the world and we have a disaster in the making. The most shocking truth is that this warming is almost irreversible, climate activists are trying to hold it below 2 degrees increase. Sea levels will reach unprecedented heights by the end of the century, wiping out beach property and inundating low lying cities.

It’s not all gloom and doom we can’t reverse the present trend and damage, but we could halt it. Some say let’s go vegetarian and save the planet. We can pressure governments to replace coal and oil burning plants with renewable energy power sources like solar and wind, geothermal and wave power to generate electricity.

The introduction of electric cars can be accelerated if governments will provide tax breaks and for a set time provide free recharging stations for electric car owners. We can plant millions of trees to absorb the CO2. Here at the Preda Foundation we plant mango tree saplings with the Aeta indigenous people in Zambales every year. Last 2019 we planted 3,968 mango trees 4 ft. a tall. This year we will plant 2000 as our budget and donations allow. (Visit www.preda.org)

We can all do something good to save the planet and reduce warming. We can recycle plastic, plant trees and flowers; eat less meat and more vegetables. Make our next vehicle electric and urge governments to change to renewable energy sources. We can save the planet and the low-lying islands for the next generation if we all work together.

In Praise of Preda Fair Trade Dried Mangoes

There was great happiness in the villages of the Zambales and Mindanao mountains this year- the mango trees produced an abundance of mango fruit. The small-scale Filipino farmers and indigenous people were delighted. Happy, beaming farmers brought their crates of mangoes to the Preda Center where they were weighed, sorted and tagged and the farmers were paid a high price for their fruit. In Mindanao, the harvest was also good. The farmers in the Preda association of mango growers brought tons of fruit to the processing plant for Preda.

It has been three years without a mango harvest in the mountains of Zambales and low mango yields in Mindanao. Both areas have unique sensitive climates. They had been badly affected due to the drastic changes in the world climate and global warming caused by emissions of CO2 gases.

The farmers supply their mango fruit to the Preda Fair Trade project which delivers the famous Preda dried mango and mango puree products to the World Shops and supermarkets in European countries, Japan and Korea. They love them because the Preda puree products and dried mango slices are unique. They are different in taste and are of very high quality. Once the customer tastes them, they want more. That is the success of the Preda dried mango. All others taste artificial from many additives.

The Preda mangoes are processed without any added chemicals, artificial coloring, preservatives or other ingredients. They have a wonderful natural sweet taste and are healthy nutritious snacks important for children and adults when we are all striving to avoid the commercial snacks that are so dangerous to our health.

The Preda mangoes are very special and they are produced to fair trade standards. There is guaranteed no child labor, exploitation, no pesticides or toxic fertilizers used and fair trade prices are paid to the farmers. Besides, any earnings from the sales are donated by Preda to support needy children in the Preda-run homes for abused children.

The mangoes that are processed into mango puree are certified as organic by an international certification group because they meet the strict inspections and verification of a clean and chemically-free mountain environment.

In Davao province, Mindanao 127 small farmers in remote areas care for over a thousand mango trees scattered across the hilly country. Last month, Donard Angeles, the Preda coordinator, went to these villages and ingeniously loaded school supplies, bags, notebooks, pens and pencils on a hired motorcycle and distributed them to hundreds of school children of the farmers.

Besides paying the farmers a generous bonus for their deliveries of mangoes, the harvest of one big mango tree will also support a child in school for one year. This keeps teenagers from going to the city where they could become victims of human trafficking. The women are the empowered leaders and manage the money in the families. They start small businesses.

Josie has four children and with her husband care for about 50 mango trees. She used her bonus for one year to start a small village store. It supplies many needs of the villagers and she is prospering. Michelle bought a sow and started pig-raising. She and her family are doing very-well. Most of the farmers are now free from dire poverty as a result of the livelihood that came from the sale of dried mangoes.

The growing and supply of Preda dried mangoes distributed by our dedicated partners has helped to provide funds for the supply of village communal toilets and water wells and hand pumps in the remote villages of the Aeta indigenous people. These are subsistence farmers. Their ancestral rainforests were cut down and the trees shipped to Europe and Japan to help rebuild those countries after World War II.

They turned to hill farming of vegetables and root crops but they did not earn any money from harvesting and selling the pico mangoes that grew in abundance but are not commercially  in demand unlike the popular carabao mangoes. When Preda and our partner in Germany experimented in processing the pico mango, it was a success and the taste is excellent. Since it is grown high in the hills and mountains where there is no chemical farming, organic certification became a possibility.

After three years of organizing and holding seminars for the mountain farmers and training local inspectors and meeting the many bureaucratic requirements, we applied for organic certification. After many visits by international experts in organic certification and local inspectors, the mangoes were finally approved as organic, a great success indeed.

Every year, there is an inspection by the certification body to see all standards are maintained. Even when there were no harvests, they had to be inspected. This year, they passed and qualified as meeting the strict organic standards. This is a big success for indigenous people in remote areas with little access to education.

There are 414 in the program. The latest Preda Fair Trade action now is the planting of trees all over the mountains including 3,958 mango saplings of carabao variety, which produce a favored variety of fruit that is of higher value. For every three packets of dried mangoes bought, we can plant another mango sapling. That is helping to reforest the denuded hills, absorb CO2 and prevent global warming.

This is a great way by which people can offset their CO2 footprint. Also, buying Preda dried mango helps farmers and children since we donate a percentage of earnings to the children’s homes. Preda dried mango is a fair trade, healthy food that helps many people including the consumer.

How We Can Save the Plant and Ourselves

The ongoing burning of the rain forests in Brazil under the newly elected president Jair Bolsonaro is an indication of the destructive power of a dictatorial leader. He is allowing thousands of hectares of rain forest to be cut down and burnt. Toxic fumes engulf many Brazilian towns. He is changing the forest into grazing lands for beef production. It is disastrous, it adds to global warming as the rain forest absorbs huge amount of CO2. Billions of cattle raised for beef emit millions of tons of methane gas annually that contribute to global warming. It is a policy whereby the rich get richer and the indigenous people lose their ancestral forestland.

In the Philippines, more than 90% of the original rain forest cover has been destroyed. Illegal logging companies find ways to circumvent the ban on logging and continue to eat away at the environment destroying species and plants. Activist defending the remaining forests have been killed. A Global Witness report released on July 29, 2019 ranked the Philippines as the worst violator of the rights of environmental and land defenders in 2018.

One of most influential Philippine environmentalists was Gina Lopez, a good of friend of mine, who passed away recently at 65. She was from a leading family and became the most active and dedicated secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and closed 29 mines for destroying the environment. She was known as a person of great integrity. She served for 8 months but won the ire of the pro-mining group members of the Commission on Appointments composed of senators and congressmen and her appointment was not confirmed. She continued supporting many NGO environmental causes and received a UN award for her work in child protection.

At the Preda Foundation, conservation work goes on. We are planting 3000 more mango trees with the Aeta indigenous upland farmers of Zambales. This is to give them more livelihood, prevent landslides and soil erosion, protect hundreds of species and off-set carbon emissions to help reduce global warming, see photos on www.preda.org and www.predafairtrade.net. Once in the early 1950s, when I was growing up, we had an organic vegetable garden. I ate the beans and peas raw. They were delicious. That was before the destructive onslaught of chemical farming in the 1960s where there was widespread, indiscriminate, spraying of pesticides in the United States and in Europe. They were fossil-based synthetic fertilizers and they poison and damage the planet. Farmers were persuaded to use them.

Chemical farming changed everything in agriculture and the food production industry. The publication of the challenging environmental science book “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson in 1962 challenged the chemical industry and caused an uproar, thus, the environmental protection movement was born. Today, environmentalists and conservationists are fighting to preserve the planet’s ecosystems and reminding us that all life on earth and our lives depend on preserving the balance of nature in a healthy environment where the oceans, forests, plants, crops, insects, animals and all wild life can live and thrive in harmony in a sustainable way.

The latest UN report, the first in 15 years, predicts that up to a million plants and animals and fish are in danger of extinction in the next twenty or thirty years. It is happening by allowing deforestation and spewing plastic into the oceans and rivers. If the killing of the magnificent elephants for their ivory continues at the present pace, they will be practically extinct in fifty years time.

Twenty thousand elephants are being killed every year, that is 55 a day. This is shocking and avoidable. Some countries in Africa have strong protection measures, others do not. Some Asians want the elephant tusks carved into ivory ornaments and they pay high prices. Although the trade in ivory is now banned, China may circumvent it. Some very ignorant and deluded people with weak procreation ability think rhino horn has medicinal properties to aid their drooping and flagging sexual prowess. They are wrong, it is useless as a medicine.

The South African government won permission to open the rhino population to trophy hunting. It is “a kill them to save them” policy. It is all wrong. The Northern white rhino is now extinct, and if this policy continues then the Southern black will be extinct too. It is ignorance, quackery, and greed that cause mass extinction. Only about 5,000 black rhinos exist today, almost 2,000 of them in South Africa. At the turn of the century there were many thousands across the continent.

The UN report says one million species are at risk of extinction and humans are causing it. We have to change our lifestyle, stop eating beef, eat more fish and be more vegetarian. The fish too are endangered, poisoned by the millions of tons of plastic dumped in the oceans. Despite this gloomy picture, there is hope to preserve the planet and wildlife. Brian O’Donnell, Director of the Wyss Campaign for Nature, said in a statement during the ongoing conference in Geneva that there is still time to halt the mass extinction. They are working with National Geographic to preserve 30% of the planet by 2030 called the “Global Deal for Nature”.

Another 100 groups of scientists and environmentalists working together have a plan to preserve half of the planet by 2050. It means that they will campaign and lobby for an end to the plundering of natural resources, massive extraction of minerals and deforestation. It is widespread in the Philippines and is destroying the ancestral lands of the indigenous people. They will promote massive planting of trees and the banning of plastics as much as they can.

The irresistible urge for capitalists to have endless economic growth and development is destroying the environment. The Rome Statement in 1972 on the “Limits to Growth” foresaw the present disaster of unlimited economic and population growth on a planet with finite resources. The warming of the planet is also causing the extinction of species. The development banks have funded coal-fired power plants, polluting industries and especially the plastic-based industries. A faster switch to renewal sources for electricity is the answer.

Electing people to government with a strong commitment to the environment is the only hope to change damaging policies and to save the planet together with the many actions and projects of the public. It is the healthy, chemical-free environment that will provide us humans with a sustainable planet and provide healthy organic food free of deadly pesticides and chemicals.

Why the Climate is Changing

 

 

The students are on the streets, waving banners, banging drums, singing, chanting, and calling for an end to the causes driving climate change that is wrecking the planet. They see the global warming caused by huge amounts of CO2 and methane gases heating up the environment and causing the melting of the ice cap on a gigantic scale never seen before. They want to close coal-fired power plants and governments to install renewable wind and solar power farms and geothermal generators to provide the electricity we need.

 

They are the voice of the planet; they are its feelings and its cry for help. The planet is, in many ways, dying and the human species, its magnificent creation, is a vengeful child killing its parent by savage greed. The warmer atmosphere is evaporating more water from the oceans, causing more frequent powerful rainstorms as never before. They, the children, the teenagers, the youth, want and demand a clean planet free from poison chemicals and pollution and the burning of fossil fuels.

 

They say enough, stop it and give us and our future children a clean planet. They want to stop the acid rain. It is poisoning the fish and the land and the people that eat the fish. They are demanding the skeptical reluctant politicians to take political action to cut CO2 gases and stop the damage to the planet.

 

I saw the negative and damaging impact of climate change on the lives of ordinary Filipino people when I went to visit the Aeta indigenous farmers in our Preda fair trade  mango project. They live on the mountains of Zambales and they were once forest dwellers, hunters and gatherers. They survived for 30,000 years, anthropologists say.

 

They are an amazing people with a culture and customs that would put many a Western community to shame. They have more gender equality- women as tribal leaders, men that carry the children on their backs, a plant based medical practice that has kept them alive for thousands of years. They are under threat from climate change. They have lost their rain forests and the climate will never revert again to be a balanced harmonious influence for growth if we do not stop the warming. The greed of the ruling elite families with international corporations devastated the rain forests by cutting and exporting logs to rebuild Europe and Japan after the Second World War.

 

Only 3 percent of forest cover is left in isolated areas around the nation. The bare hills were stripped of their topsoil by the increased rainfall and the brown earth was eroded and washed into the sea. This soil covered the coral and the smaller fish died out and the bigger fish migrated to deeper waters. Coastal fisher families were catching less and in the deeper waters foreign fishing fleets raided the Philippine seas as the Chinese do today.

 

Only rough grass and bushes grow on the bare mountains. The climate has changed as a result. The rice harvest that should feed millions of people has been lost in recent years. Prices have risen through corruption and mismanagement.

 

Rural poverty has increased and the poor have abandoned the land and the shores and migrated, like refugees, to the slums of the big cities. There they live in squalor, a once proud self-sufficient people, reduced to barely surviving. They squat in the shadows of the rich that live in luxurious condominiums. They eat ‘pagpag’ to survive- that is the boiled left-overs scraped from the food plates of the rich that eat in the posh restaurants and hotels.

   

But the Aetas have not become refugees in their own country. They have struggled to survive by continuing to adapt to climate change by planting and growing their own root crops, vegetables in a natural and organic way. They produce fair trade organic mangos, the only such group to do so internationally certified by Naturland. They live in poor villages but eat and produce healthy, nutritious natural grown food.

 

Susan, an Aeta village chief, a woman, explains how they experience climate change. She tells of the unexpected rainstorms that destroy the mango blossoms. There have been no mango fruits for three years in their mountains. It is the rebuke of a wounded and hurt nature. It feels the pain of neglect and convulses in agony with the death of plants and forests animals driven to extinction. Landslides scar the hills, rivers are polluted, chickens die, children cry and sickness is more frequent.

  

We are destroying our own habitat and eliminating our role as the planet’s self-awareness. When we are at war with the earth, we are at war with ourselves. When we hurt the planet earth, we hurt ourselves for we are one with it. We humans have evolved from its soil, its chemistry, and its life forms. The earth is our mother that gave us life and we are its consciousnesses. Through us, the planet and the universe reflects and contemplates its own self because we are its brain, the thinking being and the planet is conscious and self-aware through us.

 

Every one of us has to redeem the failures of the human race that is destroying ourselves and the earth. We must cry out and take to the streets in peaceful non-violent protest and claim our rights as belonging to  a clean healthy planet of which we are an intimate part.

The Warming of the Planet

There is something strange and unusual happening to our world and every one of us will be impacted. The Indigenous people of the Philippines, the Aeta have survived for as many 30,000 years, they have survived by their unique survival skills in the rain forests as hunter and gatherers. Their love and respect of nature and its cycles and seasons and intimate, knowledge of the hundreds of medicinal plants helped them survive. Their lives are changing with the climate change at a pace they never experienced before. 

Life is very different than it was about 70 years ago when there were still lush rain forests in the Philippines. But now the rain forests are almost all gone. Hundreds of thousands of trees cut and were shipped out to Japan, Korea, and Europe for reconstruction after WWII.The Aeta indigenous people retreated further up the mountains and became subsistence farmers. 

The Aeta people of Luzon had all of their ancestral lands stripped bare and they being a peaceful people living in small remote villages became planters and harvesters on the bare hills and mountains left behind. They planted vegetables, root crops, and a variety of fruit trees. But the absence of the forest has changed the climate drastically. Their crops are failing. There is more drought when there should be rain, and powerful typhoons where there should by dry sunny weather.  

The earth is warming, over heating and recent years were the hottest ever recorded. This causes disruptions all over the globe.Nothing like this has happened for millions of years and when it did the earth was inhabitable. Thousands of species became extinct.

It's happening again all because of us humans, the species with the big intelligent brains who should know better. We human are less human and more driven by our animal instincts and passion and not guided by reason, discipline and self control.

We as a species are the most destructive species after the dinosaur Tyrannous Rex. Our society is powered more by greed than by love of each other. Many of us humans know what is right but choose the wrong. So rain forests are destroyed, the air is polluted and poisoned and our life-style is causing the planet of overheat. It will have more devastating consequences than we have already experienced. 

Many politicians and corporate bosses especially in the developed economies refuse to face and admit the truth of global warming and dangerous climate change simply because of corporate greed, the love of comfort and money, and to retain political power and economic growth. Some say it is a hoax.We need to elect politicians who have education, strong moral values, and a love of the environment and can see and respond positively to the needs of the poor people and the planet.

The absence of political will and the blindness of denial is allowing the planet's temperature to creep upward to the maximum allowable temperature increase of 2 degrees before disaster strikes. Even this present level experts say is already a calamity. An increase in ocean temperature is causing the death of the coral reefs – they produce the life giving food of thousands of species of fish upon which millions of families depend for a daily meal. Damage the coral reefs  and we damage the food chain.

The wanton destruction of the Philippine black corals of Mindanao is the result of corporate and local government corruption They take a long time to recover. Besides the oceans are absorbing all the CO2 they can and they are becoming more acidic. Global fish stocks are threatened too. The EU has a law making nets bigger so small fish can escape and live and reproduce.   

There will be more massive crop failures, drought, floods and rising sea levels.There  will be greater forest destruction in the Amazon and massive population migrations. The Aeta and farmers everywhere will have fewer harvests as a result of global warming. The prices of food commodities are increasing at an alarming rate and as production drops, famine could once again kill millions in some countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.The tipping point of global temperature is approaching that could make the warming irreversible.   

Besides the earth is already warmer and vast tracts of marshlands in Siberia and near the Arctic Circle is melting releasing billions of tons of methane into the atmosphere. This is adding to the blanket of gas that is insulating the planet and preventing the heat from escaping. Meanwhile the sun penetrates directly unreflected by the Ice cap that has melted. Severe winter storms will be harsher, colder, and more prolonged. As I write parts of Europe is buried under mountains of snow. The rising level of emissions of CO2 causes global warming. Before the industrial revolution carbon dioxide levels were around 280 parts per million (p.p.m.) now the level is close to 400 p.p.m.  

If we humans continue this destructive behaviour, like destroying forests and burning fossil fuels in coal plants to make electricity we are going to cook the planet and destroy our own ability to survive. We have to protect the environment, clean the oceans of plastic and reduce dependence on fossil fuels. 

The Global Storm

We don’t need to be scientists to notice that around the world all creatures are enduring more severe weather conditions in recent years as the planet is getting warmer. We have to keep increase in global temperature below 2 degrees Centigrade or we are all going to fry. One result is that the forests are burning. California has the worst massive forest fires in its history. In Portugal, Greece and Sweden and parts of Siberia, fires are raging due to the tinder dry forests. Eventually even the Amazon could dry out and become grassland. Now thick palls of smoke fill the air choking the people as the flames engulf thousands of houses in fireballs leaving them reduced to piles of ashes. People are caught fleeing and burnt to death in their cars and houses.

Yet there is much worse to come. The warming may be irreversible. Have we humans, the species with the so-called intelligence, damaged our own planet? Have we in our stupidity, greed and sinfulness set in motion a series of events that cannot be halted and could we have endangered the lives of millions of people? No other species has done so much to almost irreversibly damage our own habitat.

The drought in Australia is due to the excessive drying of the planet. The impact has a global dimension on a fragile ecosystem. With huge tracts of forest and bush burnt to ashes, uncontrolled deforestation is ripping up rain forests in the Amazon and elsewhere adding to the global warming. As a result there is less forest to absorb the CO2 emissions from the coal and oil-powered power stations, our cars and trucks and billions of tons of smoke from fires contribute to the greenhouse gasses that surround the earth.

Not only is everything connected on the Earth but each ecological event can lead to another unforeseen consequence. There is a domino effect where one natural event is apparently responsible for another and that in turn causes another disaster .We are heating up the planet due to our human obsession for burning fossil fuels and many say “to hell with the consequences.” But hell is now upon us. Burning fossil fuels non-stop and animal industry by the millions for the past hundred years has created the green house effect.

The methane and carbon dioxide gases, which we produce, are so excessive due to human activity that we have wrapped the globe in a blanket of thick haze and CO2 gas that can’t escape into space. It creates the greenhouse effect. The sun penetrates the blanket of gas and is melting the polar ice caps. Sweden’s highest mountain has lost some 12 meters of snow this year. When we melt the white snow, as has happened in Greenland and the arctic, the natural mirror to reflect the rays of the sun is gone and the heat is absorbed by the oceans and land. The year 2017 was the hottest year ever for the entire planet since records were kept.

The sun’s rays are penetrating the permafrost of Siberia and the arctic, which is many meters deep, and for the first time in thousands of years they are melting and releasing a potential billions of cubic feet of methane gas, which is far more dangerous to the atmosphere than CO2.  

This in turn allows the global blanket to thicken some more. The melting of the ice cap has another knock-on effect, rising sea levels. There are reefs and islands in the South Pacific that are already inundated and the people have had to evacuate.

There is another nasty knock-on effect of rising sea levels. They disrupt the Gulf stream ocean current and it is now at its weakest or slowest movement in 1,600 years. This will heat the waters of the southern oceans and melt the Antarctica, the ice shelf that is breaking off, adding billions of liters of water to the ocean raising levels even higher.

Warmer water expands, rising oceans even further. Low-lying cities like Manila will experience greater, deeper, and longer-lasting floods. Even the permanent encroachment of Manila Bay is a real possibility in ten to twenty years. Say goodbye to Roxas Boulevard.

The economic costs of climate change and global warming are potentially disastrous. The coral reefs are already bleaching and disappearing. They are the source of millions of fish that breed there and populate the oceans, our main food source. Species of fish will die. Thousands have died in the Rhine River in Switzerland this summer. They can’t live in warm water. Fossil fuel burning causes acidification of the oceans reducing fish populations. Warmer summers cause draught and crop failures and food prices will rise and millions of people living along the coast will have to move.

These hardships cause millions of people to migrate, some are called climate refugees. They will swarm to where the food is in wealthier countries. This is already having political impact as rightwing fascist regimes are rising up in America and Europe and banning refugees and migrants.  

In other areas like the Philippines and Southeast Asia, excessive rainstorms are the new norm and scientists are worried that the remaining forest soil is so drenched it cannot absorb the methane gas in the atmosphere as it usually does. The same goes for the area burnt out by forest fires. This has the added effect of causing huge floods, destroyed rice fields and farmland, homes gone and people living in shelters. The long periods of cloudy rain-filled skies in turn curbs the productivity of solar panels, which is the best alternative to coal-fired power plants.

The only thing we can do is get political and everyone elect eco-friendly leaders and pressure government to implement mitigation of CO2 and methane. Developing alternatives to fossil fuels is essential- wave power, wind power, solar power and electric cars. We have to accept the consequence to the changing climate and adapt. 

The Planet is our Home

It surrounds us, it is in every place we go, on the street, on the beach or the woods. We see it when we climb a mountain or go for a swim. It is there, evidence of our willful neglect or ingenious inventiveness. It is our own man-made friend and already a destructive enemy. It is causing much permanent and irreversible harm to us and also to the creatures of the planet. Yes, you guessed it, it is plastic.

Every time I open a plastic-wrapped package of food or a product, I feel a twinge of guilt, sadness and frustration. I know it is a strong, reliable, protective man-made material that is very valuable in its many uses for mankind. It is used in every conceivable way from wrapping our sandwiches to the plastic chairs in which we sit. But how can I recycle and dispose of it in a safe and harmless way?

A recent report in The Independent newspaper said that there are as many as eight million tons of plastic waste dumped into the oceans every year. There are, the report says, 51 trillion plastic micro particles – 500 times more than the stars in our galaxy spread all over the planet.

In the Arctic alone, that beautiful once pristine remote ocean, researchers have detected 300 billion bits of floating plastic micro-particles.The fish everywhere are eating the particles.

Out of all the plastic produced in the past 80 years more or less, 79 percent is dumped in landfills or burnt or finds its way into the environment and the oceans and only 9 percent of it is recycled, the report says.

Earth Day is coming and we have to focus on what this low-cost, useful yet pernicious material is doing to our environment. It is so beneficial and yet so destructive. We have to change our ways and invent a plant-based biodegradable form of plastic.

We are so dependent on fossil oil-based plastic that some estimates say we humans have manufactured as much a 8.3 billion metric tons of it since 1950 or thereabouts. According to a report by Ocean Conservatory, Southeast Asian countries including the Philippines are among the worst polluters. The Pasig River in Manila is one of the worst. Up to 60 percent of the plastic junk in the world comes from these Asian countries.

The durability of plastic is what gives it such appeal to manufacturers but that its weakness too. Fossil fuel-based plastic is not biodegradable, it will not rot away like wood or breakdown for hundreds of years and even then, it will remain a toxic substance poisoning the planet.

It does slowly disintegrate into micro-plastic particles and these become dust and cling to plants, float in the air and are carried into the rivers and oceans. They attract other chemicals, pesticides, and residues that cling to the plastic particles and create an unseen dangerous toxic brew of poison. The three witches around their cauldron in Shakespeare’s Macbeth could ever imagine such a toxic brew. Yes we are brewing trouble, “Double, double toil and trouble.” This might be a cause of different cancers.

We are breathing these unseen and undetectable particles that can stick in our lungs and nostrils causing conditions that can’t be properly diagnosed. The planet or its inhabitants have not yet evolved to survive the onslaught of our own plastic poisoning. Plastic is derived from oil. The animals and our children’s children will be ingesting it for centuries to come if we don’t do something serious now to stop the pollution that is destroying creatures of our natural habitat and environment. We are stuck with it forever, it seems.

So if we live in a city environment which most of us do, or in an industrial area, we have the smog or fumes from burning coal and oil and diesel to contend with. The plastic micro-particles tend to cling to them according to new research by professor Frank Kelly, from London’s Kings College, who is a renowned researcher on the environmental hazards dangerous to our health.

There is too the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” and “The Eastern Garbage Patch.” These are huge swats of the oceans in he North Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean where plastic debris has accumulated into islands some as big as France due to the action of the ocean currents.

Fish absorb the micro particles. Turtles swallow plastic bags thinking they are jellyfish and most fish eat plankton but mistake the plastic micro-particles for food. We eat a lot of fish, which is considered healthier than eating meat. We should all be vegetarians to save the planet.

That’s not possible nowadays because we humans consumed as much as 92.6 millions tons of fish in 2015 alone, according to a UN report. Many tons of fish are discarded and thrown back dead into the sea as not being commercially valuable in the western world. What a shocking waste. But it means that those of us that do eat fish will be ingesting more plastic than ever before. Soon, we will be carrying the plastic particles that will disrupt our hormones and inner organs. We have not yet evolved as plastic-resistant creatures.

Yet there is hope in the development of plant-based plastics and packaging but they are a long way from general use. See www.preda.org “Say Goodbye to Plastic.” 

Some towns and cities are banning the use of plastic bags. Here in Subic Bay Freeport Zone, only paper bags are allowed, no plastic bags. There is a new CleanSeas campaign announced by the United Nations to clean the oceans of plastic debris. Let us give good example by recycling our plastic at home and clean the environment of plastic and encourage our nation to join the campaign.