The world is dying and you can’t stop it.

I magine a world where not a day passes by without a place experiencing extreme heat waves, not a day passes by without a place experiencing catastrophic flooding, not a day passes by without an extreme natural calamity happening which will claim human lives. That will be the world we will all be living in if we are to continue the path that we are currently treading in and the sad reality is that we can’t stop ourselves from going down that path.

Every single day there is always an issue about climate change and frankly it’s turned into such a major and pressing issue all around the world that we cannot simply call it climate change anymore. We are already in a climate crisis as this will not only affect a certain country or a certain location in the world. This will affect everyone and the most damning thing about the entire crisis is that the people who are going to be most affected by this crisis is not taking more drastic actions to address it as a whole.

A vast majority of climate crisis activists still fall under a minority in a world where people are either complacent or they simply don’t care about the climate crisis. We are only seeing climate crisis activists reaching hundreds or to the tens of hundreds, but never to the thousands or the tens of thousands and that should serve as a measurement of scale on how society treats the climate crisis and these climate crisis activists are getting tired of the inaction in status quo that they are turning into more extreme ways in order to generate attention and to promote a call to action to promote a more aggressive and more proactive stance on the climate crisis. We’ve seen various environment-related NGO’s take this stance such as the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society which is famous for their appearance in Whale Wars which aired on the Discovery Channel in the past and a more recent global environmental movement called Extinction Rebellion which promotes nonviolent civil disobedience in order to shine a spotlight on the climate crisis and to encourage governments and companies alike to take more concrete and more effective measures to address the problems of the climate crisis.

However, as much attention these groups of people are signing on to the issue of the climate crisis, there is a lot that we still cannot do. This is evident in the positions of oil companies that are still continuing to build new oil refineries new oil extraction sites that will contribute to the increase of billions of cubic meters worth of carbon emissions all over the world for the entire lifetime of the site. These projects are known as carbon bombs and governments are not doing anything to prevent these carbon bombs from being operational due to the impact on the economy that these projects have since they are going to be able to bring in billions worth money into the country’s economy and couple that with the very strong lobbying from the oil industry then you’re going to have a government that is unwilling to take action in order to address the climate crisis all for the sake of profits.

People in the Philippines have already experienced how the climate crisis is going to affect the rest of the world every single year we are getting worse and worse typhoons and this is evidenced by the fact that ten of the most destructive typhoons ever to hit the country happened in the last twelve years. We would expect the Filipino people to be more proactive about this climate issue because it is affecting a lot of Filipino lives but then again within the Filipino society there isn’t any tangible movement that is calling for action on the climate crisis. Sure, it may have NGOs that are trying to tackle the problem but the leadership in the Philippine government isn’t taking a more aggressive and proactive stance on the climate crisis would be what’s expected of them if they ever realize that the climate crisis will transform how the Filipino people will live their lives in the future not for the better, but for the worse.

All this begs a very simple question: What can we do? The answer to that is pressure. We must put an incredible amount of pressure on the government and the companies that are not taking a more active and aggressive stance on the climate crisis with emphasis on the government in particular because as what we have seen in other countries around the world the companies will always prioritize their profit especially those in the deregulated oil industry of the Philippines. We must pressure them in various ways whether it’s by boycotting the products of the companies that are unwilling to address issues of the climate crisis or by taking a page out of Extinction Rebellion’s book and promoting nonviolent civil disobedience in order to show the entire country and the world just how much this crisis will affect our future in a negative way if we are not to take any action to address the issues that are causing it.

Unfortunately, the way how the Filipino society works as of writing is that people are only willing to take action if it’s already a big movement because a lot of Filipinos are only willing to join when the bandwagon effect starts to kick in. Couple that with the fact that the government are treating activists as terrorists through red-tagging and other means, this will result in an environment where people cannot voice out their concerns and grievances regarding the climate crisis and create a complacent, uninformed, and oblivious society that will only start taking action when it’s already too late.

Try asking any middle-aged Filipino on how they see the state of the Philippine environment fifty years in the future. Chances are, they will not be able to give you a concrete and logical answer. That is the result of the lack of awareness programs to the climate crisis in the Philippine society. Although that will certainly change in the future knowing that Filipino youth are more informed and taking a more proactive stance on the climate crisis, this will mean that movement for the climate crisis awareness will be deprived of the demographic which has the ability to exert the most pressure on the government and the companies that are not able to address the issues of the climate crisis. Due to the lack of support from this demographic, members of the government who don’t think that the climate crisis is a pressing issue and the companies that are prioritizing profits over the welfare of people all over the world are going to use this to downplay the effects and the warning signs of the climate crisis which will only worsen the complacency of the society.

In the end, we are already one-third down the path of destruction and there is nothing that we do to can stop it by ourselves. We must band together and shine even brighter spotlight on the climate crisis, a light so bright that it will take the attention of every Filipino and create a spark that will light the fire of an aggressive, passionate, and intelligent movement that will tackle the problems that are causing the climate crisis in the Philippines and spread it towards the rest of the world. The greatest moments in humankind are not just created by one person, rather, those moments are created by a group of people that share a common goal and are willing to do everything to emerge victorious.