Inconvenienced

Truth is always disturbing. It does not appear attractive all the time. The case is the same with the perils of global warming. I intend to watch Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” and I’m hoping I get this film as a frebbie. Of course I am willing to pay for it if only to make a statement that there’s a price to pay to understand the world.

Global warming was first explained to me in detail in 1993. As a third year high school student, I was sent with 14 others to the Global Youth Earthsaving Summit in Quezon City, Philippines. I remember the United Nations declared 1993 as the International Year of the Indigenous Peoples. That is why, among the highlights of the summit was a speech by Rigoberta Minchu (I’m not sure if the spellings are correct) Minchu was a Nobel Peace Laureatte and was from an indigenous peoples in Guatemala. The indigenous peoples around the world, in 1993, was already batting for the cut on the use of fossil fuels and CFC-emitting appliances.

Global warming is not a new issue. In 1993, it was already considered an “old story” that continues to happen. But maybe watching the film could help update us, if not help us understand the matter in a broader and perhaps full view.

Visit the film’s official website here.

Minding mining

On September 5, Geoff Nettleton, the British coordinator of the Philippine Indigenous Peoples’ Links (PIPLINKS) talked about the International Mining and the Philippines in a forum organized by AFRIM. Let’s see what is Nettleton’s take on mining in the Philippines especially that indiogenous peoples, like those in Canatuan, Zamboanga del Norte are complaining against abuses by TVI a mining firm there.

Nettleton will also speak with scholars and intellectuals at the Mindanawon School about another related topic at the Ateneo. Read  some of his insights here.

  

Fogged in Buda

The way from Bukidnon to Davao on September 4 was really very foggy, chilling and blue. When the bus started to climb up the hills of Quezon, Bukidnon I started to feel the temperature going down. The bus interior lights were also turned off.

I could see moist on the window glass. The biting cold entered my bones. It was still early (5 p.m.). It was raining along some parts of the trip.

I did not take my jacket out (stucked at the bottom of my bag). Not that I was really trying to brave it, but because taking the jacket out would mean disarranging my bag, what a mess could that be.

Thank God the bus steward was a son of the 1990s. He played beautiful alternative music on the stereo from Collective Soul, Eraserheads, River Maya among many others. I think he also got an album of music on rain from the Apo Hiking Society, Regine Velazquez and the alternative’s rain music.

With lights off, I sang along and sidelined the foggy evening trip.

When I stepped down from the bus four hours later I was the ‘Last Song Syndrome’ walking down the street with the Eraserhead’s “Overdrive” in my mind. It was a nice trip after all.