Statement of World Environment Day-Philippines Network (WED-Phils.)The World's Environment Needs
Quiet Heroism and Fearless Rebuttal
of Official Absurdities
WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY, commemorated on June Fifth every year, as mandated by the United Nations way back in 1972, seeks to strengthen the consciousness of Humankind on the fragility and critical condition of our planet as the habitat of Humankind and that of all the other species that the homo sapiens is at least expected to be concerned about for their, and consequently our own, survival. In the almost 40 years that have passed, destruction of planet as a living environment has gone on by leaps and bounds, surpassing the rate of destruction the earth has had to suffer in much longer periods of time in the past when Humans were admittedly not yet “wise” enough in terms of scientific knowledge, technology, and resources management.
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. ..........The rate of climate change has surpassed all known previous equivalent periods, threatening the viability of continents that now stand to be inundated by rising sea levels amid the largescale melting of polar ice.
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. ..........Nothing short of collective human heroism can save the planet from the destructive effects of human “modern” activities in just the past few decades.
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. ..........We are observing World Environment Day in no less than the 150th birth year of a most renowned Filipino hero. Known to Filipinos and many other peoples for his very fruitful life and his untimely death at the hands of Spanish colonialists that still held sway in this country in his time. Indeed, many Filipinos ascribe his recognition as hero to his willingness to face the Spanish regime’s firing squad out of his legendary love for our country. But beyond his dramatic heroism that ended his life, many Filipinos hardly know his quiet, undramatic, heroism, especially in sustained acts of service to people in the communities where he lived or was forced to live, ironic for a people whose very words for heroism, bayani and kabayanihan are inextricably rooted in selfless service for the community.
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. ..........So, Jose Rizal, exiled by Spain in Dapitan, a sleepy town in Northern Mindanao, decided to be very active in community service in such diverse fields of knowledge and activity as agriculture, the arts, education, medicine, cooperativism, and even engineering to create for Dapitan its ingenious water distribution system. Considering the contrast of his hectic life in Europe and Hongkong to the sleepytown rural existence in Dapitan, Rizal could have refused to engage in any of it and instead concentrated on a few activities that would fire up his imagination, Jose Rizal chose instead such “non-political” activities as farming, teaching of little boys, medical practice practically for free, and collecting specimens of exotic thitherto unknown species of insects and reptiles. Rizal’s community service heroism shines to this day as the type of heroism direly needed for the effective protection and conservation of the environment in the various localities.
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. ..........Rizal’s heroism also shone in his defiant rebuttals of the teachings of the Church of his time, with the friars zealously teaching the people to be submissive to the self-serving dogmas more upon these friars’ authority than upon the proven logic of their systems. Filipinos would do well to emulate Rizal’s defiance by exposing the emptiness of the logic and the promises of our present-day mercenary economists who invoke as gospel-truth the supposed logic of such environmentally-destructive economic theories and practices as large-scale mining, excessive logging, producing and selling biotech poisons, unfair trade and international bullying and usury. To the literary work by this writer articulating the apologetics of the “Prophets of Profits,” a present-day Rizal would write a thorough rejection and rebuttal as to render all such theories and justifications ineffective and absurd!
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. ..........As we observe World Environment Day in the Philippines this year, 150th year anniversary of Rizal’s birth, we cannot help but assert, for all to hear and comprehend, that his quiet heroism serving the local community, and his defiant rebuttals of official absurdities, still shine for all Filipinos and other peoples to emulate, if we are to have any chance of success at protecting and conserving our World Environment. Actually, it it a matter of life and death. in terms of consequence.
Ed Aurelio 'Ding' C. Reyes
Co-Chairman Emeritus (one of two),
concurrently Secretary-General,
World Environment Day-Philippines Network (WED-Phils.)
a.k.a. Green Families and Communities Network
Subic, Zambales, for circulation on or before June 5, 2011
Next:
MESSAGE FROM THE ‘PROPHETS OF PROFITS’
By Ding Reyes
Please check out this link:
http://readdingz.blogspot.com/2010/04/message-from-prophets-of-profits.html
WED2011 MESSAGE OF U.N. SECRETARY-GENERAL BAN KI-MOON
click here.
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