Are you shivering already? Read on...

Baguio is freezing, and I love it. Actually, in Tarlac as well as in Manaoag, Pangasinan, I was already freezing due to the cold weather. It was much colder outside the vehicle despite the A/C working full blast, and try this, I was wearing sweater and shorts, hahaha! The last time I wore shorts was in a six degree winter temperature in China, and meteorologists in PAGASA are saying that Baguio's weather at 9.6 degrees is actually comparable to fall temperature. I was tempted to go all the way to Sagada or Banaue to see if frost were forming during dawn, but I had to stay in Baguio briefly. I went the usual breakfast at Cafe By The Ruins, which has been a monthly thing already since I am in Baguio every month. Lunch was in SM City Baguio, my favorite mall since it is so environment-friendly, the mall doesn't have an A/C except the theaters and the department store. The mall just uses blowers to circulate the cold mountain air, just imagine how much CFC-free the mall is, at least I could presume that despite Baguio's polluted air, there is still something to be happy about. Global warming is all over the papers lately, and even in the movies, 10 years to 30 years from now, we would be experiencing a sudden shift in weather. Actually, it has been happening now in the Philippines, stronger typhoons, red tide, those are signs of global warming. Mindanao has been experiencing heavy rains for the past few months, the rising sea temperature is killing the extensive corals of the Philippine seas due to bleaching, and as much as we would plant trees all over the country, I guess it is too late to counter the carbon emissions from cars and factories, from slash-and-burn kind of farming, from too much forest denudation. We just have to helplessly wait for the earth to march into the next ice age, which is a natural phenomenon that happens every 10,000 years, and the last ice age has wiped the dinosaurs into extinction, and now, it will be humans destined to be wiped out. And it will be a time for renewal of the species, the survival of the fittest will be put into test again, as Charles Darwin pointed out in his theory of evolution. And I am computing my age now, which is 33, and I am happy and sad at the same time since I won't be there when we will experience snowfall in the Philippines, and sad since the next generation will reap the gruesome toll of our wanton ways, of not respecting our environment. We are growing in ways that we never imagined, from the onset of Ford's mass production of the first T model cars to unimaginable growth of the automotive industry as well as other industries as well, the past 100 years have ushered the industrial revolution in a pace that Mother Earth could not keep up. The greenhouse effect, with heat-emitting gases trapped in our atmosphere, compounded by the Sun's heat, makes our planet a "hot zone", where diseases will rise out from nowhere, ebola virus from the humid jungles of Africa, avian flu from the tropics, mad cow from temperate countries. This compounds nature's backlash against us, we were supposed to be be stewards, we were supposed to be in charge of this planet, and yet, we failed her despite her giving her bounty and resources for all of us to experience. Ten years from now, the seas will not give enough fish to catch, the air will be harder to breathe, water will be everywhere yet it won't be potable and some parts of the globe will experience dryness that is uninhabitable, maybe Africa, Australia and some parts of Asia. Global warming is a ticking time bomb, and two of the world's biggest superpowers and economies, the United States and China, are turning a blind eye about it. U.S. sees China as an ally for its exports such as cars and industries, and China sees U.S. as its prime client for its output, together, they will make things hard for everyone. When U.S. conquered Iraq twice, it contributed emissions from burning oil wells, and what a coincidence, father-and-son team of Bush is responsible for them. I still have to watch Al Gore's "The Inconvenient Truth", the former U.S. vice president's take about global warming, but I have a pretty idea of what it is all about. It is not about a loser crying out foul against his antagonist, George W. Bush, but a loser's bout for Mother Nature. We can't just wait for things to happen, we have to make them happen. And when it happens, we just have to brace ourselves for the outcome.