In our column Eleventh Hour this week, Climate Reality Leader Keith Ancheta shared how the youth are actively leading the fight for the present and their future through community-based climate actions.
There is a dire need for the enactment of House Bill (HB) No. 9147 or the Single-use Plastic Products Regulation Act on account of the grave impacts of plastic pollution in the country, according to a policy note recently released by a group of AB Development Studies students at the Ateneo De Manila University and The Climate Reality Project Philippines
Strong climate leadership is an imperative in this critical decade for climate action—our last window of opportunity to limit global warming to 1.5˚C. This was emphasized by youth leaders and climate advocates in the 27th episode of The Climate Reality Project Philippines’ Klimatotohanan webcast series entitled “Boto ng Kabataan para sa Klima at Kinabukasan.”
The science is clear – we are in a climate crisis. We have been for decades, yet we continue living as if we are not in an emergency. Progress towards climate change mitigation and adaptation remains frustratingly slow, displaying an utter lack of urgency towards the crisis we’re in.
We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost’s familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road–the one less traveled by–offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of our earth. The choice, after all, is ours to make.” These words were written more than half a century ago by Rachel Carson, one of the pioneers of environmentalism, yet they hold true today more than ever before.
Giving the recently concluded 26th Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) a failing mark, Filipino youth climate activists vowed to continue driving the work of the climate movement towards a just and sustainable world that stays below 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming.
