Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet Book

I cannot remember exactly when I heard about global warming for the first time. I'm sure it was not in school since I was already a college graduate at that time. I was not a voracious reader then and all I was dreaming about was how to land a good job and convince my father to let me get married as I could already support my own family.

That was approximately in the mid-eighties. Few years after the AIDS spread around the world. It was also the time when my handsome brother was egging us, his 3 siblings, to pray the Holy Rosary every day. Now and even then, he has a strong influence on me, so I got into the habit. Then the 7.9 Cabanatuan earthquake hit the Philippines in 1990. The year after Mt. Pinatubo erupted spewing ash in almost half of the globe. Then just after few months, the deadliest typhoon, Uring hit the country killing 8,000 Filipinos. Somewhere along the way, I stopped praying, I thought it was not working.

Global warming. The first time I heard it, I said: so, are we going to be fried in heat because of the thinning ozone layer? That one, the hole in the sky, I've been hearing since I was a kid. The spread of cancer because of the sun's radiation so better protect yourself by wearing sun block solution. But that is expensive. Better stay indoors. But how come the vacation Americans on the beach stay there doing nothing but just lying the whole day almost without clothes? Oh, they love the sun! And maybe they have put on the sun block since they have money to buy them. Okay, better not to go out at noontime then.

Then there was this other conflicting thought. As a result of the global warming, the temperature will become cooler because of the cooling effect of the moisture in the atmosphere. Wow. Squared. So, the heat in the tropics will go away? Will we have snow? That's cool!

When the documentary movie of Vice President Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth came out in 2006, I watched it in full attention. That answered almost all of the questions I had in mind regarding global warming. However, the image of Al Gore losing the presidential election to President George W. Bush in 2000 was still fresh in my mind and I could not comprehend how the guy whose face was shown over CNN almost every hour due to the recount was suddenly talking to me about our doomed planet. I had a hard time dissociating the environmentalist Gore with the politician Gore. Mind you, I was in Tokyo during the whole stretch of the recount and the hotel TV had no English Channel except CNN.

The first time I heard about global warning, it was just a threat. "The Threat of Global Warming" said in the cover of Time Magazine. Gore and this book: Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet are both saying that it is no longer a threat. Global warning is now upon us. It is here. It is happening. We are now experiencing it. You may not know it because you are reading one book after the other and you don't have the time to watch CNN or read Time or Newsweek or the papers. But hey, yohoo, yes you there, global warming is here.

McKibben says that in every 1 degree Celcius increase in temperature, the following happens:

1. Increase in thunderstorms over the ocean by 45%. This is true. The Philippines are hit by fewer typhoons these past few years but they are bigger and stronger than before. How do you reconcile about hotter temperature and more rains? It's because the warmer atmosphere evaporates moisture from and areas more rapidly, but also holds more moisture causing more intense downpours when it does rain.

2. The tropical areas are expanding This is true. El Nino seems to be occurring year after year reducing the production of the coconut in the Pacific island where I grew up. My classmates in high school were complaining that the income from coconut production is no longer sufficient to meet their daily needs.

3. More frequent, piercer lightnings. This is true. My mother who lives in San Diego says that the California fires are becoming more frequent and the last time I was there, she said that she almost thought that her placed would be burned as the fire was almost few blocks away already. Also, in my home island, a father and his son who were in their briefs as they just finished taking a bath were both combing their hair when the lightning stroke and they were burned alive. Their underwear had to be pulled from their skin as everything were turned into ash.

4. Water is now more acidic. Oh yes, the red tide. We eat less and less of seashells because in some parts of the sea, the molluscs are poisonous. My wife now always asks the market vendor where the shells came from before buying them.

5. The spread of dengue fever. My former housemaid almost died of this. One weekend, she went to visit her boyfriend and after few days, she was sick that we thought she would die. She was trembling, she couldn't eat, she felt she would like to vomit non-stop. She had dengue and she had to go to the nearby community clinic to have her platelet examined. During that year, a 16-y/o classmate of my daughter died of this too and that was my first time to see my daughter crying because of a death of somebody not related to her in blood.

There is no denying now: Global Warming is now happening. This planet we are living in is no longer the same planet our grandparents or even parents lived in. This explains the extra "a" in the title. It is up to our generation to make sure that we will not be handing this over to our children in worst state. We must act now.

McKibben's solution: fundamental shift in attitude. Small communities should organize themselves to help the environment.

Take heed to this plea from Barbara Kingsolver: "Read it, please. Straight through to the end. Whatever else you were planning to do next, nothing could be more important."

She made me buy and read this book.