Fhilcar Faunillan

Climate Change Fhilcar Faunillan

Nowadays, we get off on anything that is fast and all its synonyms - fast food, quick service, fast delivery, etc. Take more than a week for your ordered product to be shipped, and you blow a gasket. Mornings are blurred memories full of instant noodles and easy to prepare cereals. We hurry through life by pressing down on the accelerator of our cars so we can race with others to get to our destinations. But in every squeeze of insecticide cans to kill off cockroaches or in every flick of the switch to turn the lights on, we - unwittingly for some, indifferently for others - are affecting our planet in a way that is, more often than not, destructive. We are changing our planet, and we are changing it fast. How fast, you may ask? Fast enough that efforts to curb the significant detrimental effects of human activities would not be sufficient in the long run. Blame being busy or simple self-centeredness, but we hardly notice what is going on in our environment. Blame our sense of entitlement and superiority or some other human quality but simply put, we do not care about it. We think that nature is for our taking, that we can do with it whatever we want. We throw garbage everywhere even if there is a huge sign right in front us discouraging the act. I am pretty sure you have gone through this phase. Perhaps, you are stuck at this phase, but I remember when I was a child and I did not really give a damn about throwing my candy wrappers and junk food containers on the street once they are empty of food. It took a scolding from my parents and school lessons to make me stop doing it. But for some people, no amount of knowledge and reprimands could change one's attitude towards environmental preservation.