When a 'Climate Emergency' is not enough
Welcome to Climate Weekly!
This week, we’d like to introduce Gaea Katreena Cabico, journalist from the Philippines who writes stories about the environment, climate crisis, human rights and health in Philstar.
Kumusta! 👋
I am Gaea Cabico, writing and working from my apartment in Metro Manila, where mornings have gotten colder as we approach the holiday season.
This year, Christmas festivities will inevitably be different; with over 435,000 COVID-19 cases and 8,000 deaths, Filipinos will celebrate Christmas in quarantine — during one of the longest lockdowns in the world.
On top of movement restrictions, the Philippines faced three strong typhoons in the past two months, including Super Typhoon Goni, the world’s strongest storm in 2020. Two more cyclones are projected to affect the country before this challenging year ends.
Goni left a trail of destruction across the Philippines. A week later, Typhoon Vamco struck the country, triggering the worst flooding in Metro Manila and across Northern Philippines since 2009.
Several trees were uprooted after Super Typhoon Goni lashed Bicol region. Photo credit: Bill Bontigao
I was in my hometown in Nueva Ecija, just North of Manila, during the onslaught of these typhoons. Goni spared us, but we weren’t so lucky with Vamco.
Vamco, for me, was the strongest typhoon that I’ve ever experienced. Its winds kept me awake in the early hours of November 12.
Thankfully, aside from our uprooted Mango tree, our house was spared. A friend not too far away, had to be rescued because his home was flooded.
The mango tree in our backyard was uprooted during the onslaught of Vamco in Nueva Ecija. Photo credit: Gaea Cabico
According to legislative probes in the days since, the flooding was a result of climate changes, but not alone.Typhoons regularly batter the Philippines. Climate change is exacerbating our exposure for sure.
But these recent flooding events, and many of our worst disasters are also the direct result of denuded watersheds, resource exploitation and decades of short-sighted planning that has left millions of people, more vulnerable to storms like this.
As a response, President Rodrigo Duterte (who has a penchant for creating task forces) formed another task force called “Build Back Better.” Clearly someone’s been watching Biden’s Presidential campaign.
From what I can tell, the task force is going to be responsible for implementing and monitoring our post-disaster recovery and rehabilitation efforts going forward.
Super Typhoon Goni destroyed homes in Bicol region with its destructive winds and torrential rainfall. Photo credit: Bill Bontigao
Last week, the House of Representatives passed a resolution declaring a climate emergency. To me, this non-binding declaration only appears as lip service from politicians. While this declaration urges local governments and agencies to adopt policies to mitigate the effects of climate change, it does not legally compel them to act.
Duterte, has not declared a climate emergency himself. He is said to be studying the proposal. What the country urgently needs is a climate emergency declaration that will establish a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to address the crisis, hold polluters accountable and ensure the country’s rapid transition to renewable energy.
In October, before these storms, we had small signal of hope. The Energy department announced it will no longer accept new proposals to construct coal power plants. Though lauded by anti-coal campaigners, the ‘ban’, which is not yet national policy, doesn’t include previously approved projects that are already in the pipeline. And finding out how many are still in this ‘pipeline’ is a challenge.
While the move is not going to be enough, it is a huge step toward the right direction, for a country still ringing the water from the walls of Typhoons Goni and Vamco.
From Climate Tracker
To Read: Modhi’s government works extremely hard to maintain its public image, especially by silencing youth activists, according to Raqib Hameed Naik
To Read: Japan is often hailed for its energy efficiency gains, but what about its efforts at reforming agriculture? Ryhan Mohd Yazid has become a green tea farmer over the past year and shares her thoughts on the country’s progress.
To Listen: Mai Hoang sat down with a team of young Media researchers to discuss how the future of energy is being reported across Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines
A thought for the week
This week, UN Secretary general Antonio Guterres said the world is on a “suicidal” path, literally “waging war on nature”. Just before the he said this, he sat down with Climate Tracker fellow Manka Behl at the Times of India.
In the exclusive interview, he said that he wanted to “tell India that there is no future in coal”. He also wanted to “ask India to make a bigger effort in promoting renewables.”
This is no suprise. Guterres has campaigned on climate issues since his time in Portuguese politics, and for the last 2 years has almost single handedly run a “no new coal after 2020” from the Secretary General’s position. This has made him arguably the most pro-climate UN leader since Peru’s Javier Pérez de Cuéllar in the 1980s.
However, one thing stood out for me. Over the last decade, our climate movement has attacked coal relentlessly. We’ve attacked it so much, we even designed “just transitions” for coal workers.
But while this campaign is well deserving of praise every time a coal project goes offline, we’ve created a natural blind spot for ‘natural’ gas. Not surprisingly, even as the fracking industry in the US has seen its record write-offs this year, gas exploration and investment has boomed in many places where coal is in decline.
Earlier this year, when India announced a planned doubling of its national gas pipelines, the move was framed by the Economic times as an “environment friendly” shift. A similar framing was used in September as Australia pinned its post-COVID recovery on gas, even calling it a gas-led recovery. Even when the Philippines Energy department ‘banned coal’, their chief stated that “we’re looking at a more flexible source like gas, geothermal, hydro and others”.
This alignment of gas, a nonrenewable energy, alongside renewable alternatives, continues to be the common-place framing around the world, with little analysis of the disastrous impacts burning methane gas is having.
Listening to Guterres talk about the greenhouse gas war that is being waged, without mentioning ‘natural’ gas this week gave me room for pause. We all must pick our battles, and clearly he has not stepped back from his own.
But I do wonder, why do so many leaders seem so silent on gas, even when they are so negative about the impacts of coal?
This is a Weekly newsletter created by Climate Tracker.
If you have any questions, comments or want to get involved, email me at chris@climatetracker.org.