I guess this is very true. The picture below is almost perfect. There's a good subject and a nice background. Taken at the Fort Bonifacio area of Taguig City in Metro Manila, Philippines, in the early morning a quarter past seven o'clock. The sky is almost blue and with this scene I would have titled it "Resurrection".
However, looking closely at the background of the picture there's a discolorization at the lower part. It's kind of brown or tan. I have enhanced the picture to make it more pronounced.
The discolorization is obviously a smog brought about by the thousands of motor vehicles that plies the city everyday. I'm not sure if the people in the area could see how bad the condition is. Maybe they need to take the view from the distance. That area is Makati City, the primary financial district of the country.
The image is a visual warning that there's a need to check on the level of awareness of each individual on our environmental condition. According to Little Green Data Book 2007, CO2 "emissions worldwide topped 27 billion metric tons in 2003, an increase of 19 percent over 1990 levels." and a greater share of the emissions came from high income countries. This simply shows how urbanization and modernization could greatly affect environmental condition.
I just uploaded a news entry on our official website regarding a joint venture of the Philippines and the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to explore the depths of the Celebes Sea “in search of the strange, and possibly unknown, fishes, jellyfish, squids and shrimp that live in the dark deep waters”.
I went to the website of US-NOAA to get more details of the exploration. They identified that the Celebes Sea is not yet well explored, that there “may well be species that have evolved in isolation from other surrounding waters, waiting to be discovered with modern exploration tools”.
The expedition gives me the idea of what I see in the National Geographic channel where high technology meets the challenge of bringing new information on the less explored life on the planet that is the sea. This is a very overwhelming experience if given a chance of joining the team. However, that would only be in dreams. Not only that I am not qualified, I always have sea sickness.
Maybe the only thing that I could do to support this grand effort is to post this entry to let everyone know that such an activity is undergoing. The exploration would start September 27 and ends on October 16, 2007.
This is the first time I volunteer for the International Coastal Cleanup. On its 22nd year, the mission of the cleanup is to “… to remove trash and debris — on land and under the water. Volunteers of all ages from every continent will form the largest one-day volunteer event on behalf of clean oceans and waterways.”
We conducted the cleanup at the Levy Mariano Bridge in Taguig City. The bridge is located at the very heart of the city so it is not a surprise if I would see all the garbage imagined in a third world country. To my assessment, it is worse than the Pasig River.
One interesting feature of the cleanup is to identify the waste that had been trashed on the waterways. We have a sheet of paper to monitor the items picked from the waterway. There was an item to list the things that we picked up that we thought were troubling. I identified three: a lighter fluid container, a diaper and rubber tires.
One observation that got into my nerves though is that there is no participation from the community where we did the cleanup. It is so frustrating that the volunteers came not from the community but from the offices of the city. One big question is, how could the community be conscious of its environment if there is no participation coming from them? I just hope that community leaders would conduct an outreach to the grassroot so that they would be more aware of what is happening in their environment.
I encountered this image from eccentrip.blogspot.com. It caught my attention and asked the permission of the author to post it here. It’s a weird idea but I guess if we just read between the lines, we could see how important a tree is to our environment and hence to ourselves.
Shadows embracing the heart of the forest
Making the colors monochromatic greens
Light clamoring how it could peep through
A canopy of branches and leaves
Creating a secured sanctuary
To the terranean organisms
Against the harshness of the sun
And the exploitation of mortal intruders.
A gust of wind from a location not known
And the floor of the damp undergrowth
Feels the warmth of the galactic orb
Resurrecting the thirsty and dying souls
Breathlessly suffocated
With the monotonous cacophony
Of the guardians of the wilderness.
Struggling its way through the underbrush
A bipedal entity wandering of no direction
Looking for answers
To a dilemma of choice
Between the fullness of heart
Or the brilliance of gold
Ambiguity of thought he seeks
Wisdom of the indigenous spirits
Sheltered in every corners of the jungle
Waiting.
This is my entry to the on-the-spot watercolor painting contest during the Women's Month celebration last year. We have three hours to finish the contest. The painting is all about the role of women in preserving the environment. With the nurturing characteristic of women, they are thought to be the best guardians or caretakers of the environment. I won third place.
The Green Epidemic is not a scourge that could wipe out the environment but rather an emerging and active global campaign against environmental degradation. I created this spot in blogosphere to indicate my support to the ongoing war against the corruptors of our environment. This may not create a loud bang but I hope that in my own little way, I could make a difference in the campaign by paying a tribute to Mother Nature.
All Rights Reserved 2004-2007 the Green Epidemic
