BROKEN AND FORGOTTEN

UNEDITED SAMPLE EDITORIAL ARTICLE
By Vladimir Paat Villegas
IV-Sir Isaac Newton


If there were things such as environmentally-prone issues in our country so far this year, there were already two – the energy crisis and the sinking of MV Princess of the Stars. They might have not talked about nature at all, but why did they become environmentally-prone after all?

Remembering the energy crisis, we heard MERALCO and the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) questioned in the Senate of the Philippines. They were caught between a wall and a rock because the MERALCO tried to grab the money of the people by the unstoppable hike of bills and the system loss charges included in our electric bills and yet the Energy Regulatory Commission themselves could was sleeping in a shelf despite that tragic thing. Then we heard from them also that there was an energy crisis happening already, allowing them to increase the bills. It was not yet the worst thing which made the issue a threat to our environment, but the proposal of Energy Sec Angelo Reyes to open the Bataan Nuclear Power Station as a source of electricity of the country was the one which gave a signal for Mother Nature to raise the red banner.

Another issue to tackle was the sinking of MV Princess of the Stars, a ship owned by the greatest maritime disaster-making company of the country, Sulpicio Lines. The typhoon Frank was at its height during that time. At first, what everyone heard from the news was that some people were just killed by the typhoon because of an accident in land; but then, the bitter part broke out when hundreds of our countrymen were buried in grief because their loved ones vanished with the sinking of the ship. Days later, the coast guard could not continue the search operations because they saw that there was a toxic substance coming from the ship and spreading in the water, making that maritime disaster not only a big concern of the country because of its citizens, but also a big issue which reminded us of a past accident.

Relating these to studies, it seemed like the Philippines would want to go against the nature already for the nation seemed to break the seven multilateral environmental agreements we signed, in which five of them were really about these issues which we now face, and forget the words of the famous environmentalists of our time, including our own Von Hernandez.

Regarding the opening of the long controversial Bataan Nuclear Power Station, are we not concerned regarding the environment, especially the Basel Convention? We sound that we truly want to degrade nature for we are not yet contented by being one of the former dumpsites of the nuclear wastes of other developed countries. If we are to open it then, where are we going to get our funds, which is billions of pesos?

Regarding the maritime disaster, why was there a toxic substance inside that passenger ship? By that, we truly mean to degrade nature itself through our ordinary citizens by just repeating the tragedy which happened years ago in Guimaras.

In our status today, we have just broken our covenants and forgotten our learning for we seem to begin the silent spring in our country. Together with other issues, we limit our county’s growth, paving no more way to sustainable development. But if we only want, there is still a way to solve these problems if we have the will to take care of our nature.