Lesson in 5 parts on TATAKalikasan, Ateneo de Manila University
87.9 FM Radyo Katipunan, every Thursday) 11 to 12 a.m., Nov 14, 2024
Armageddon in the Making
Environmental degradation
exacerbates climatic adversities
Dr Abe V Rotor
Co-Host with Fr JM Manzano SJ, and Prof Emoy Rodolfo, AdMU
What is wrong in this picture? (See answer at the end of article.)
REVIEW AND REFERENCE ARTICLES
Series 1 - Environmental degradation is the most serious global abuse
Series 2 - Stockpile of nuclear weapons can annihilate present
human population three times over.
Series 3 - Old and dying cities are abandoned into a concrete jungle
Series 4 - Diseases and many forms of human misery are masked
by the Good Life.
Series 1: Environmental degradation is the most serious global abuse
Typhoon and flood images in Bicol, Northern and Central Luzon
Environmental degradation is the most serious global abuse, not only in pursuit of actual human need, but his unending want of affluence apparently of no end. The earth is slowly choking with deadly gases, its surface defaced and stripped of natural cover, man-made materials dumped on land and water, in fact its geography has changed and continues to be modified directly and indirectly by man.
1. What withheld the world to shift to alternative energy was the cheap fossil fuel, virtually oozing from the ground and flowing through pipelines around the globe to feed the
Bad air over New Delhi, typical in other big cities like Beijing, New York and Metro Manila
industrial boom and millions of cars as affluence rose to the point of ostentatious and frivolous living. But each car’s exhaust is a miniature volcano, erupting daily, worse than a Mt Pinatubo (Philippines) and Mount St Helens (US) combined.
2. The air accumulates gaseous materials and particulates, building acid rain that turns soil acidic and unproductive, defacing valuable works of art (historical relics and artefacts), causing illnesses heretofore unrecorded in medical books, and triggering other diseases as well, including the resurgence of ancient diseases like tuberculosis.
3. The ozone layer, a protective blanket against radiation from space is being thinned by CFC and other gases. A hole at the southern hemisphere as big as continental USA, exposes millions, particularly children, in Australia and New Zealand to ultraviolet rays, a major cause of skin cancer. A smaller ozone hole is building up over the Arctic region.
4. Gases in the atmosphere trap heat from escaping, thus solar heat together with heat generated by the earth and man’s activities collectively contribute to global warming at an alarming rate. Climate change has been the cause of climatic adversities (typhoons, tornadoes, drought, blizzards), erratic weather, and other unexplained atmospheric phenomena.
5. In Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” the world is getting warmer and warmer at a geometric rate, far exceeding any period of the history of the earth except in its early formation. Warming is traced to increasing amount of CO2 in the air, the principal gas of combustion mainly of fossil fuel that runs agriculture, industry, transportation, and illuminate whole cities around the world.
6. The failure of timely shift to alternative fuel even as fossil fuel sources are dwindling, even as alternative energy is available, even as population demand tremendously increased in the past one hundred years, has grave consequences which we are feeling today, and this is just the beginning - fuel shortage, high cost of living, increasing inequity leading to mass poverty.
7. Environmental degradation is the most serious effect, not only in meeting actual need, but unending want of affluence apparently of no end. The earth is slowly choking with deadly gases, its surface defaced and stripped of natural cover, man-made materials dumped on land and water, in fact its geography has changed and continues to be modified directly and indirectly by man.
8. Reminiscent of the Dust Bowl of the Dakotas in the US in the early 20th century are similar desertification cases, farmlands becoming wastelands due to excessive farming and poor management, such cases include the Sahel region (Africa) struck in the 60s by extreme drought, farmlands around the shrinking Aral Sea (Russia), the source of irrigation now only a measly fraction of its original size.
A comparison of Aral Sea in 1989 (left) and 2014 (right)
9. We don’t have to go far. Our own Laguna Bay, bigger than the Sea of Galilee, is dying, its once pristine blue water as I saw it in the sixties as a UPLB trainee in a lakeshore barangay, Gatid, Sta Cruz, is now shallow and muddy as siltation and pollution from homes, farms and industries from four surrounding provinces worsen by encroaching settlements and fishpens clogging the lake – indeed a desecration of the lake’s beauty as described in Rizal’s celebrated novel, Noli Me Tangere.
10. All over the world lakes and rivers are dying: Lake Chad of Africa, Aral Sea of Russia, tributaries of Mississippi in the US, Nile in Egypt, Yangtze in China, Mekong in Vietnam. Who would believe that odor of methane and hydrogen sulphide from the polluted harbour of Hongkong is the first to greet passengers even before landing on the sprawling modern airport? So with tourists on reaching the deck of the 100-storey Sears Tower on Lake Michigan in the US.
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Greek Armageddon, Harmagedōn, scene of the battle foretold in Revelation 16:14–16· a : the site or time of a final and conclusive battle between the forces of good and evil. - a decisive conflict or confrontation. While we do not know how God will use his power, he will have at his disposal weapons such as those he has used in the past —hail, earthquake, flooding downpour, fire and sulfur, lightning, and disease. In confusion, at least some of God’s enemies will kill each other, yet they will ultimately realize that it is God who is fighting against them.—Ezekiel 38:21, 23; Zechariah 14:13.
Stockpile of nuclear weapons can annihilate present human population three times over.
Armageddon an acrylic painting by AV Rotor
A third world war was averted during the 45-year Cold War. As hindsight, an arms race revealed from both sides USA and USSR and their respective allies built a stockpile of nuclear weapons potentially capable of annihilating mankind three times, and irreversibly destroying the earth’s biological and ecological balance,
3. A third world war was averted. As hindsight, an arms race revealed from both sides a stockpile of nuclear weapons potentially capable of annihilating mankind three times, and irreversibly destroying the earth’s biological and ecological balance, with radiation and other poisons that can persist for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
Fiery scene, painting of an 8-year old. Children's Art Workshop, 2017
6. But what really tore down the boundaries of nations zealously guarded by politics and economics have been the breakthroughs in science and technology, particularly in communication and transportation, disseminating information through multimedia and bringing people together. This ushered the beginning of “globalization.”
1. A third and final world war is inevitable, it is now long overdue reckoning the first and the second at a generation’s interval. I am a witness to the second at its closing in mid 19th century, and grew up in its ruins in lives and properties, and in the relative peace that followed thereafter;
2. For 45 years until 1989 that peace thrived in fear and uncertainty under the proverbial Damascus Sword. The world was polarized into two warring ideologies – democracy and socialism – with countries, with few exceptions, drawn to either the side of America or that of Russia, then the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or USSR.
3. A third world war was averted. As hindsight, an arms race revealed from both sides a stockpile of nuclear weapons potentially capable of annihilating mankind three times, and irreversibly destroying the earth’s biological and ecological balance, with radiation and other poisons that can persist for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
4. Year 1989 marked historical events of global significance: the dissolution of USSR to its core which is Russia, liberating its members as independent nations, and the reunification of East Germany and West Germany in a celebrated tearing down of the Berlin Wall that separated them for half a century. This marked the end of the Cold War.
Two men fighting to death while being swallowed by quicksand, indeed a mutual suicide, by 18th century Spanish painter Goya.
5. The new era favored the transition of People’s Republic of China to open its doors to the free world following Mao Tse Tong’s death. Earlier the two Vietnams were reunited following the defeat of US-backed South Vietnam. South Africa, like India twenty years earlier, gained independence from Britain with Nelson Mandela at the helm.
6. But what really tore down the boundaries of nations zealously guarded by politics and economics have been the breakthroughs in science and technology, particularly in communication and transportation, disseminating information through multimedia and bringing people together. This ushered the beginning of “globalization.”
7. Man has conquered space in cyber communication, and space travel. The whole world is “wired” and crisscrossed by space lanes, shrinking the world into a village, so to speak. Liberalization brought socialism and other restrictive ideologies to their knees. Unopposed, capitalism rose and dominated the economy of nations and the world.
8. The world became one huge economy under capitalism with trade barriers lifted, trade zones expanded, cartels and monopolies emboldened, regional unions created and expanded (EU, APEC, ASEAN), industrialization and agriculture tremendously grew to meet demands of population explosion, affluence and growth of urban centers.
9. Forests were logged, farmlands and pastures exploited, lakes shrunk (e.g. Aral Sea), waterways polluted, air loaded with carbon and gases (CO2, Sulphur, methane) returning to earth as acid rain - and heat. The Ozone layer is thinned out by CFC compounds. Desertification, erosion, siltation add to the wanton destruction of the environment.
Stonewall of the Heart, by AVR
10. A shift from fossil fuel has long been overdue. For more than a century the internal combustion engine has remained virtually unchanged. A shift to nuclear energy has chilling reminder of Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombing in WWII, and nuclear plant incidents (Chernobyl in Ukraine, Fukushima in Japan), North Korea’s and Iran’s threat as new nuclear powers, notwithstanding.
Series 3 Armageddon in the Making
Old and dying cities, and infrastructures
abandoned into a concrete jungle
As we review Gibbon’s thesis of lost civilizations, we can’t help project the future of countless cities in the world – new, “golden”, dying, deserted. We can only gleam at old and dying cities, infrastructures abandoned into a concrete jungle, or buried in “the sands of time.”
29. Domicile used to be community-based with indigenous and genetic roots established by history, culture, economics and beliefs, which prevailed over time: family to tribe to community, expanding into town, and lately into city. Cities continue expand at an accelerated rate, eating out not only their suburbs, but their former provincial bases for which they were once the capital, like nucleus of a cell. The countryside is now an orphan, while metropolises and megacities have grown into cancerous social structures.
30. Today’s city is basically of the same structure as those in the past, even in ancient times – Babylon, Rome, Athens, even those of the Aztecs and Mayans – and what is our outlook of metropolitan life, and the dream place we used to call “the Golden City”? As we review Gibbon’s thesis of lost civilizations, we can’t help project the future of countless cities in the world – new, “golden”, dying, deserted. We can only gleam at old and dying cities, infrastructures abandoned into a concrete jungle, or buried in “the sands of time.” Detroit, once the pioneer and monopoly of the US automotive industry, Is now considered dead, a clear warning in postmodern times amidst global prosperity.
Left, Spirit of Detroit, bronze statue biggest since Renaissance. A family in his right hand, golden sun in his left - indeed a symbol of prosperity. That was in 1955. Restored recently, it symbolizes a past glory.
Right, image of Mother Teresa, now a saint graces an empty plaza. Who is the poor? It's ironic, the poorest of the poor could the wealthiest once upon a time.
21. We don’t have to go far. Pasig River is not only polluted, it is an open sewer! Pasig River in the time of Balagtas and Rizal was a most beautiful scenery to compose songs, verses, to paint scenes, a piece of biblical Eden immortalized and revered, but alas, relegated to the archives, leaving but nostalgic memories, and gloom sans a sense of guilt, even as the dying river passes Malacanang Palace, high rise buildings, and luxurious malls and estates. (See Dirge of the Pasig River in this Blog)
22. Potable water is a scarce commodity. The cost of bottled drinking water is ironically more than gasoline in many countries including the Philippines, when we have direct access to springs, lakes, rivers, artesian and shallow wells. Freshwater constitutes less than ten percent of all the waters on earth, three percent of which are potable, but this is getting more and more difficult to obtain as watersheds dry up, glaciers disappear, natural sources polluted.
23. Wastelands are expanding, a consequence of mismanagement and market-directed monoculture agriculture, depleting soil fertility and balance. On the other hand wastelands like swamps are reclaimed but to the expense of wildlife and natural resources irreversibly destroyed in the same way that I found, as project director of Sab-A Swamp in Leyte, not to mention microclimate change and desertification.
24. Traffic problems are getting worse each day, building up to a point of choking avenues and streets, even private roads are forced to open as alternative routes. Towns like Vigan, San Fernando LU, Laoag which gained city status now experience traffic congestion as more vehicles increase in number and utility. Traffic is today the Number One cause of smog. Smog over Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong is the worst in the world.
25. What a pitiful sight when caught in hours-long traffic! It’s virtually paralysis in practically all aspects of living. Energy loss runs to millions every day. There is virtual dome visible as smog over the city, a huge gas chamber with every vehicle spewing deadly gases and carbon, joined in by factories and establishments, countless homes notwithstanding.
26. No wonder more and more people are getting sick of many pollution-related diseases from the recurrence of ancient diseases like tuberculosis, to modern ailments like allergy and hypertension. When you are subjected to too much stress the body suffers of fatigue, physically and mentally – and spiritually as well. Many people spend their life sick and depressed, dependent on medicine; many die, and die before their time.
27. The Computer Revolution is touching our faith more openly and deeply now than during the age of Bible Study and Sunday Worship. The marriage of religion and technology has gone farther than following Mass on TV. It is now available on the Internet the subject of God in the countless denominations of faith. But even a world-wide web apparently cannot not bind Christians and Jews, Muslims and Buddhists together.
28. On the contrary fundamentalism in many religions is drawing the faithful farther from ecumenicism which has the objective of common understanding irrespective of religious affiliations. On the contrary a crisis is looming with religious members leaving their conventional religious institutions and creating one themselves, such as Born Again, Ang Dating Daan. Others simply quit. They are called Nones, literally no religion. They however, have chosen the way they worship, help the needy, deal with religious congregations in which they are no longer a part, etc.
30. Today’s city is basically of the same structure as those in the past, even in ancient times – Babylon, Rome, Athens, even those of the Aztecs and Mayans – and what is our outlook of metropolitan life, and the dream place we used to call “the Golden City”? As we review Gibbon’s thesis of lost civilizations, we can’t help project the future of countless cities in the world – new, “golden”, dying, deserted. We can only gleam at old and dying cities, infrastructures abandoned into a concrete jungle, or buried in “the sands of time.” Detroit, once the pioneer and monopoly of the US automotive industry, Is now considered dead, a clear warning in postmodern times amidst global prosperity.
Detroit - Death of Utopia
Right, image of Mother Teresa, now a saint graces an empty plaza. Who is the poor? It's ironic, the poorest of the poor could the wealthiest once upon a time.
Detroit today, antithesis of progress, failed Utopia.
My dad worked here in the thirties. He was a working student of De Paul University in Chicago. It was Detroit's crowning glory. Dad never knew of the sad fate of this biggest city in the he world in its time. He died in 1981. In my visit to Chicago in 1976, little did I foresee Detroit's eventual downfall. What really is the world of Utopia we dream of? (Internet photos) Series 4:
Diseases and many forms of human misery
are masked by the Good Life.
Diseases and many forms of human misery are masked by the Good Life. These are surreptitiously spreading around the world causing many complications, untold sufferings, and death.
Rainbow over Beijing
They turn into pandemic as they merge with other diseases – HIV-AIDS, obesity, diabetes, accidents, are becoming common cases.
31. The most prevalent poisons in food are man-made, mostly from pesticides, particularly those designed to control pests – insects, fungi, weeds, mites, mollusks, nematodes, etc – which have developed increased resistance and even immunity through years of repeated application. They persist as residues in food and in the environment, carried on through the food web and food chain, riding far and wide, not only on the life cycles of affected organisms, but on their interacting populations.
32. The first pesticide of global importance is DDT (deoxy-diphenyl-tetrachloro ethane) introduced in the forties as the final answer to the malaria problem by controlling mosquitoes that spread the disease. Indeed DDT is highly effective not only against mosquitoes but other insects as well that its inventor was awarded the Nobel Prize. It was found out later that its residue is persistent and cumulative, and transferred through the food chain – ultimately reaching man. Although totally banned DDT is still clandestinely manufactured under different brands and names.
33. We exaggerate cleanliness. We use detergents, pesticides, deodorants, air fresheners, and cosmetics. My father used to warn us in the family, "We are unwittingly introducing into our bodies materials which may be more harmful than the germs we are trying to control." Rub-on mosquito repellant is carcinogenic, so with Chlorine added to drinking water and swimming pool. Sodium fluoride mistaken for baking powder or wheat flour is extremely harmful, although fluoride used in small amount in toothpaste helps keep our teeth strong and healthy.
34. Many kitchen utensils contain harmful metals. There is little warning, if at all, not to cook food with vinegar in aluminum pots, not to use Antimony- or Cadmium-plated utensils. Plastic containers react with food, specially the acidic ones, microwave oven emits radiation harmful to the body in the long run. In spite of this warning the use of microwave, because of its convenience, has even increased. Didn’t the Romans suffer of a mysterious disease unknowingly caused by lead (Pb) coming from their drinking vessels?
35. Many food additives cause of ailments and death: Vetsin or mono-sodium glutamate that retards mental and skeletal growth specially in children. Burglars silence dogs with pandesal containing vetsin. An overdose may lead to death. Unscrupulous vendors use Formalin to extend the shelf life of fish, Nitrate or salitre in meat products, food dyes, Aspartame and saccharine (sugarless sugar) and Olestra (fatless fat). The cheap kind of vinegar is diluted glacial acetic acid, the same kind of acid used in photography and other industrial processing.
36. The first case of mass lead poisoning occurred among the Romans when they changed their cups and vessels from bronze to lead. Today it is estimated that over 400,000 children in the US have an excess of lead in their systems. This cumulative poisoning affects the brain, the nervous system, the blood, and the abdominal system characterized by severe stomach cramps, nausea, vomiting, weakness and confusion combined with decreased alertness. Lead in the bone marrow interferes with the formation of red blood cells as well as damaging existing ones leading to anemia, pallor and weakness, and to a severe extent, delirium, coma and even death.
37. Rapid economic growth has led to record levels of pollution, producing filthy air rising and spreading over highly industrial centers and densely populated cities. Here power plants, factories and vehicles release pollutants into the air, and as the sun heats up the ground, the polluted air rises. But polluted air cools quickly over water and sinks to the surface and disperses. Without strong wind to clear it away, the pollution mix can build up over time, leading to BAD (bad air days) which can last for several days, and repeated over and over - and can get worse with deteriorating environmental conditions
38. Bubonic Plague brings to mind the dreaded scourge of mankind in the Middle Ages. Rats are the carriers of this bacterium-caused disease also called the Black Death. It was so deadly that it claimed the lives of at least 100 million people with 25 million in Europe alone. It stopped man’s progress that the period was appropriately described Second Dark Ages, spreading around crowded cities and towns, with the pestilence peaking with climatic upheavals, such as what we know today as the El Nino phenomenon. The bubonic plague appeared in the United States in 1900 and then in India in the late 1970’s. Although modern medicine effectively controlled even before it reached epidemic stages, the threat looms like ghost with huge metropolises and megapolises.
39. Diseases and many forms of human misery are masked by the Good Life. These are surreptitiously spreading around the world causing many complications, untold sufferings, and death. They turn into pandemic as they merge with other diseases – HIV-AIDS, obesity, diabetes, accidents, are becoming common cases.
40. On human behavior: “Of all God’s creatures, there is no species more guilt-ridden, confused and self-destructive than man. Fear, remorse and frustration underlie his basic behavior probably as a result of his forbears having been driven out of the Garden of Eden…Man kills not for food, he eats when he is not hungry, he mates in and out of season. His suicidal tendencies are unique. While the lemmings drown themselves as a result of reduced food supplies, man will willingly cultivate cancer of his lungs by smoking poisonous plants, convert his liver into a hobnailed atrophic mass of dead tissues with alcohol, or remove himself from the control of his mind with narcotics…” - Arturo B Rotor, MD, The Men Who Play God, AdMU
Topics to discuss
1. Fish kill, red tide
2. Rising sea level
3. Radiation in the air
4. Loss of thrust
5. Ill effects of tourism
6.Depression and suicide among the young
7. Brand scam and media blitz
8. GMO and cloning
9. Social Media
10. Obesity and Senility
11. Conspiracy Theory
12. Tragedy of the commons
13. Natural - food lifestyle
14. Plastic world
15. On-line anomaly
16. Instant syndrome
17. TNT, man without country
18. Changing sports
19. Evolution in man's hands
20 Shrinking wildlife
21. Global inflation
22. Sitting is the "new smoking"
23. Natural resistance and immunity
24. Planned obsolescence
25. Breakdown of institutions
26. Where is the money?
27. Big bang to blackhole, and back?
28. Hate campaign
29. Collective suicide in disguise
30. LGBT anti-evolution
31. Loss of identity
32. Functional art
33. Neo-Malthusian syndrome
34. Rise of cities - orphaned ganglion
35. Death of megapolises
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Answer to the question asked: The picture does not show flooding or excess water as a result of more and stronger typhoons, intensified rainfall, and rising sea level. School assignment: Revise the picture accordingly. Better still, make a large painting on canvas or board, and exhibit it in your school or community. (Acknowledgement Internet)
