“Environment is Key in Ensuring Our Safety” – Dorothy Lenore Llariza Reflects on Nick Perlas’ ANC Interview

Environmentalist and presidentiable Nick Perlas’ short segment at the ANC Channel with Ricky Carandang this evening touched a core in my being when he specifically mentioned how his own house went underwater during typhoon Frank last year. Being an Ilongga myself and having personally seen the devastation in Iloilo last year, I understood what he was saying.

Clearly, Nick said we have a need as a nation, beyond political lines and beyond personalities, to prepare for global climate change which was predicted by a scientist 20 years ago. Ricky commented that perhaps, none of us really believed that global climate change would – or could – happen to us in this particular time.

One major move for preparedness, Nick said, would be to remove residences from river areas because, in the coming seasons when waters will inevitably rise due to changes in the Arctic region, those areas will be the first to be hit the hardest. Other preparations will be to transfer evacuation areas to elevated places, and strengthen telecommunication lines and strategic points of communication so that NDCC’s monitoring will be accurate. Nick also mentioned PAGASA’s plan to purchase state-of-the-art equipment to accurately measure weather patterns, which was somehow shelved due to ‘interests’ of some parties.

I personally agree with everything that was taken up for such a short time. The inevitable changes in world weather patterns should make us human beings flexible enough to also change our ways of thinking, our lifestyles, our behavior towards the environment, and our views of social responsibility. If environmentalists all over the world have revised and updated over and over again their data on climate change, then we should also keep ourselves in the same pace and space, because, Nick  Perlas said in conclusion, this is now “a matter of survival.”