SPEAKING before the United Nations General Assembly, Pope Francis challenged the international organization to bring peace and environmental justice, placing blame on “a selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity.” At the same time, the Pope endorsed the efforts of the United Nations to reach a global compact to fight poverty and climate change.
As the head of the Holy See, Pope Francis invoked the principle of international law and equality among nations and endorsed the concept of “rights of the environment,” to save the earth’s forest and seas, and humanity as a whole, by addressing climate change now. He said “any harm to the environment is harm to humanity” and that the global poor are among victims of environmental destruction.
Destroying our planet
Our planet is at imminent grave risk of being irreparably destroyed if global warming (more appropriately termed climate change), as Pope Francis alluded to, continues unabated.
Like the multitudes of problems threatening the world, this major one is caused by its intelligent inhabitant, man himself, and his careless and irresponsible behavior in the last two hundred some years. Human beings are not new to self-abuse, self-destruction, and irreverence to their environment, in spite of their education, culture, and massive data in this age of exploding informational technology and mind-boggling advances in science and medicine.
Humanity’s self-abuse and rape of its only hospitable environment are almost certain to doom the world people live in, unless they listen to Mother Nature and promptly start to take a wise proactive strategy in dealing with the present ecologic dilemma. Humans cannot afford to lose this one — their only sanctuary in the galaxy. And what’s happening is scary.
Historically, the earth’s climate has gone through various changes, from the ice age to prolonged periods of heat waves. The factors involved include the alteration in the Earth’s orbit, the degree of energy from the sun, and volcanic eruptions. The latter part of the 18th century ushered in the human factor: the industrial revolution which has contributed to more massive environmental pollution.
The human factor includes the carcinogenic fumes from cigarettes; carbon monoxide/dioxide from engine emissions; chemical contamination from the household agents (soaps, bleaches, tile and toilet cleaners, etc.) we use daily; factories polluting our atmosphere and dumping of toxic waste products into the our rivers and lakes; deforestation and destruction of our greeneries; invasion of the original habitats of animals; disturbing the natural order of things; and the environmental insults that urbanization brings with it. These changes in the natural landscape have affected the health and atmosphere of our planet, causing its “body” to have a temperature that is rising like a fever from an “infection,” and at an alarmingly faster rate than what it should be. All of this is because of what we — its intelligent inhabitants — have done to the one and only “life-sustaining home” we know in the galaxy.
The burning of fossil fuels, such as coals and oil, and deforestation over the past two centuries have led to the “greenhouse effect,” where the toxic gasses in the atmosphere have significantly increased to the point of trapping heat, causing the earth’s temperature to climb more rapidly than ever before in its history.
The resultant man-induced depletion of the ozone layer (nature’s protective “umbrella” shielding us from the harmful variety of sun rays) is likewise a great health hazard, a most plausible contributing factor in the alarmingly increasing rate of the various cancers killing people in the world today.
Although greenhouse gasses, at safe levels, are essential for life as we know it to keep our planet comfortably warm, abnormally high levels are far too dangerous for our planet. Presently, man’s abuse of his environment has adversely affected many aspects of our lives: our means of subsistence, agriculture, aquaculture, among others.
Data from the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration and NASA “show that the earth’s average surface temperature has increased by about 1.2 to 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900…the warmest global average temperatures on record have all occurred within the past 15 years, with the warmest two years being 1998 and 2005.” This indisputably means the human factor has caused this dreadful and scary phenomenon.
Indeed, as guests on this planet we call home, we have not been eco-conscious and environmentally-friendly enough to Mother Earth. This has resulted in the gradual deterioration of our ecosystem, as Pope Francis pointed out.
What are the signs of a widespread and long-term trend toward global warming? The manifestations include unusually warmer weather and heat waves; glaciers melting; Arctic and Antarctic warming; oceans warming; rising sea levels; and coastal flooding. Aren’t the various volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, typhoons, hurricanes, and evident weather changes not enough hints for us?
If man does not do anything about this climate change soon, the resultant impact of this global warming, according to experts, will lead to the following “harbingers”: diseases spreading more easily, spring arriving earlier, coral reef bleaching occurring, plant and animal range shifts and population changes taking place, downpours, heavy snow falls, giant tidal waves and flooding, droughts and fires.
While government initiatives by nations all around the globe are vital to the remedial solution, our individual and concerted community behavioral modifications and proactive lifestyle changes could immensely help and positively impact on how much longer we can keep Planet Earth a safe place to live in. The ball is in our court, as Pope Francis hinted. Indeed, humanity’s fate — our tomorrow — is in our hands.
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Philip S. Chua, MD, FACS, FPCS, Cardiac Surgeon Emeritus in Northwest Indiana and chairman of cardiac surgery from 1997 to 2010 at Cebu Doctors University Hospital, where he holds the title of Physician Emeritus in Surgery, is based in Las Vegas, Nevada. He is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, the Philippine College of Surgeons, and the Denton A. Cooley Cardiovascular Surgical Society. He is the chairman of the Filipino United Network – USA, a 501(c)(3) humanitarian foundation in the United States. Email: [email protected]
