Global Warming: a factual myth

Last week I went to a UP Centennial Lecture (cool, I’ve never been in a lecture where all UP campuses get to interact after the talks—through videophone!) on global warming. Dr. Perry Ong’s thesis was simple but unnerving: yes there is global warming, but it’s not all our fault, so quit feeling guilty and act on the real problem.

Indeed, our penchant for guilt has led us to put all the blame on global warming on ourselves. We’ve forgotten that volcanic eruptions and cow farts can actually cause more atmospheric damage than the sum of all Chinese in the world.

What we should do? Of course, laxity is out of the question. Global warming is still a fact. Rushing around in paranoia, as Al Gore’s campaign may initially cause, is more so out of the question.

We should conduct more focused studies on the other causes of global warming, and from there, design a collective human action to counter the totality of causes of global warming.

As they say in philosophy, when you take a thing apart to study each part, you must put everything back to study the whole, otherwise, you’ll just waste your time. We’ve blamed ourselves enough. Now it’s time to see the bigger picture and act accordingly.

There’ll be another UP Centennial Lecture next Wednesday, 2 pm at UP NISMED. It’ll be on Education. I hope to see you there.