MINERVA BC NEWMAN
CEBU CITY – Faith-based organizations, renewable energy leaders led by the Energy Development Corporation (EDC) and other stakeholders from the business sector, civil society, academe, and the Catholic Church led by the Focolare Movement Philippines, Season of Creation Pilipinas, and the National Laudato Si Program under the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) echoed the ‘code red’ alarm on climate change in a landmark zoom/webinar on September 7 dubbed “Climate Change: The Greatest Crisis of Our Time.”
The virtual zoom/webinar was organized by the Ecumenical Initiative Forum, a gathering of faith-based organizations against climate change guided by the landmark Laudato Si encyclical of Pope Francis with EDC president and chief operating officer Richard Tantaco as the keynote speaker.
“Contrary to what a lot of us may think, the COVID-19 pandemic is not our greatest problem. Even when we get out of this pandemic, the biggest crisis of our time remains and that’s climate change,” Tantoco said.
The sixth in a series of periodic reports put out since 1990, it is the most daunting and alarming to date, pointing to irreversible consequences of climate change if no drastic action is taken to decarbonize the atmosphere, Tantoco added.
Among the undeniable facts the IPCC report established was that human activities have unequivocally warmed the oceans, land and atmosphere, when it was merely deemed a possibility eight years ago.
It has also been confirmed that the scale of the recent climate system changes as a whole is unprecedented within a period of thousands of years of Earth’s existence.
In response to these scenarios, Tantoco outlined practical steps that nations and enterprises can take such as accelerating the pursuit of renewable energy (RE) in powering not just homes and industries but transportation as well, coupled with “green” investing and an unequivocal rejection of fossil-based fuels such as coal.
Forest cover rehabilitation and regeneration is also critical, Tantoco went on that for communities, resilience against extreme weather disturbances needs to be of utmost priority for local government units.
For families and individuals, simple but impactful lifestyle practices such as conservation of natural resources and decreased material consumerism continues to be a big help, he said.
“While we can no longer undo the environmental mistakes that humanity has made in the past, it is up to all of us to do something to prevent them from happening again—to be a part of the solution to the greatest crisis of our time,” Tantoco concluded.
Its 1,181MW geothermal portfolio accounts for 62 percent of the country’s total installed geothermal capacity and has put the Philippines on the map as the world’s third largest geothermal power producer. (Photos: Google Images)
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