FOR THE VICTIMS

According to the Inuit Petition which was decided last December 7, 2005, Global warming refers to an average increase in the Earth’s temperature, causing changes in climate that lead to a wide range of adverse impacts on plants, wildlife, and humans. There is broad scientific consensus that global warming is caused by the increase in concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere as a result of human activity. As a result of well-documented increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, it is beyond dispute that most of the observed change in global temperatures over the last 50 years is attributable to human actions. This conclusion is supported by a remarkable consensus in the scientific community, including every major US scientific body with expertise on the subject. Even the Government of the United States has accepted this conclusion.

The United States is, by any measure, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and thus bears the greatest responsibility among nations for causing global warming. The United States of America, currently the largest contributor to greenhouse emissions in the world, has nevertheless repeatedly declined to take steps to regulate and reduce its emissions of the gases responsible for climate change. However, and notwithstanding its ratification of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, United States has explicitly rejected international overtures and compromises, including the Kyoto Protocol to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, aimed at securing agreement to curtail destructive greenhouse gas emissions.

The sea level rise from global warming in which the US is the primary contributor, is escalating the risk posed by storm surges across the globe, including in low-lying areas of the Philippines.

According to the Congressional Research Service report last February 10, 2014, Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda), struck the central Philippines on November 8, 2013and is one of the strongest typhoons to strike land on record. Over a 16 hour period, the “super typhoon,” with a force equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane and sustained winds of up to 195 mph, directly swept through six provinces in the central Philippines. The disaster quickly created a humanitarian crisis. In some of the hardest hit areas, particularly in coastal communities in Leyte province and the southern tip of Eastern Samar, the storm knocked out power, telecommunications, and water supplies. The humanitarian relief operation was initially hampered by a number of significant obstacles, including a general lack of transportation, extremely limited communications systems, damaged infrastructure, and seriously disrupted government services.

According to Yale/Tulane ESF-8 Planning and Response Program Special Report last November 2013, Yolanda is the second-deadliest Philippine typhoon on record, killing at least 5,670 people. Since 1969, only three storms have had sustained winds close to the magnitude of Yolanda— Hurricane Camille in 1969, Super Typhoon Tip in 1979, and Hurricane Allen in 1980. No storm in the Atlantic has ever been stronger than Yolanda.

The humanitarian situation in the areas devastated by Yolanda is catastrophic. Over 14 million people are affected, including some 5 million children. More than 3 million men, women and children have been displaced. Many are desperate for food, safe drinking water, basic shelter and sanitation. There is substantial damage, and all homes and buildings in the path of the storm have been significantly damaged or destroyed. A large storm surge also hit the city of Tacloban, washing entire communities away. Most areas have no water, power or communications, little fuel, and access is hampered by the severely damaged infrastructure.

Typhoon Haiyan not only killed thousands and made millions homeless. It also struck an already poor region, pushing families deeper into poverty, and making them more vulnerable to the next disaster.

While climate change is global, its negative impacts are more severely felt by poor people and poor countries such as the Philippines. They are more vulnerable because of their high dependence on natural resources and limited capacity to cope with climate variability and extremes.

Given this premise, it is of the developed countries responsibility to aid repatriate those developing countries who were greatly affected by the negative effects of the climate change that they have caused.

FOR THE US

The climate has always and will always be changing, and that is unquestionable. The Earth’s climate is self-regulating. The Earth’s climate actually has been very unstable in the distant past. Climate change is a normal part of the Earth’s natural variability, which is related to interactions among the atmosphere, ocean, and land, as well as changes in the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth. The geologic record includes significant evidence for large-scale climate changes in Earth’s past. There have been times, hundreds of millions of years ago, when much of the planet was covered in ice. Tens of millions of years ago, tropical species flourished in Polar Regions (such as during the era of the dinosaurs). A wealth of scientific evidence indicates that the climate has changed significantly and abruptly (within one or a few decades) numerous times in the past. Hence, with the exaggerated environmental situations in the past, there can be no doubt that another exaggerated situation (such as increased cases of typhoons, changes in the climate and the like) can happen in the years or even decades to come in our planet. Such occurrence is inevitable and that we all have to be prepared with this. Society can easily adapt to climate change; after all, human civilization has survived through climatic changes in the past. We should put our resources into adapting to, rather than preventing, said “climate change”.

For more than thirty years, a litany of predictions and claims have been made about what impact human-caused greenhouse gases would be on the earth’s climate, and on plant and animal life directly. Much of the concern that has been raised—and which continues to be raised—focuses on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, an otherwise naturally occurring gas that makes the process of photosynthesis and life on earth possible. Over nearly four decades, numerous predictions have had adequate time to come to fruition, providing an opportunity to analyze and compare them to today’s statistics.

The amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) generated by human activities is much smaller than natural sources; therefore, human activities cannot be responsible for the large observed increase in atmospheric CO2 over the past few centuries. The warming of the past century has been caused by natural factors, such as solar variability, a recovery from the Little Ice Age, cosmic rays, etc.; the warming was not caused by the increase in greenhouse gases (GHGs). This is shown by the fact that the warming has not followed the trend of GHG concentrations. An increase in solar activity and sunspots is responsible for most of the warming over the past century. The number of sunspots is higher during periods of high solar activity and high overall sunlight intensity.) The fact is that direct satellite measurements of solar intensity exhibit little or no trend over the past 25 years, a time of rapid warming (IPCC 2001).

The global warming observed for the past century at Earth’s surface has been caused by urbanization (urban heat island effect) and other changes in land surfaces, such as deforestation, not greenhouse gases. Urbanization increases temperatures locally, and can potentially affect the determination of the global trend, since some measurement sites are located in urban areas. Buildings and pavement absorb sunlight, heating up their surroundings, and dense human settlements release significant amounts of waste heat. Urban and agricultural areas also replace trees, which cool the Earth’s surface by providing shade and evaporating water drawn up from the soil.

Forests in the Northern Hemisphere are absorbing as much CO2 as is emitted through the burning of fossil fuels. Therefore, it is developing countries in the south that are to blame for increasing CO2.

Moreover, we should not put the blame on the US alone as to the devastation that occurred to the Philippines because of typhoon Yolanda. We should condemn the gross incompetence and unreadiness of the Philippine government even though weather forecasts had already warned days in advance of the category 5 superstorm Yolanda and the expected massive flooding from the storm surge. The Aquino government only made token announcements and evacuations, did not stock food and water, and did not prepare emergency services. Rather than passing the buck to the United States, it should have been the responsibility of the national government to ensure the safety and well-being of the people because of the scale and scope of the calamity. After the storm, the people had to fend for themselves as the Aquino government’s relief efforts were virtually nonexistent. Indeed, more than a week after the storm, food and water have yet to reach Guiuan and other areas, and many of the dead have yet to be buried.

The impact on the areas affected by the typhoon Yolanda would not have been massive if the Philippine government was equipped and organized for the said typhoon. It is of common knowledge that the Philippines being an archipelago, is a country that is prone to such typhoons. Given this fact, the government should already assume the negative effects of typhoons in the Philippines and other destructions that may occur if they fail to act on such.