These circumstances have brought about a shift in the discussion on climate change — from the realm of scientists, the academe, and policy makers, it is now taking place in the public arena. A new challenge for Greenpeace and other environmental groups is to make sure that the Filipino public is engaged and heed the warning against the dangers of climate change.

But how does one simplify the science of climate change while making sure that Filipinos don’t see it as trivial and of less importance to other raging issues? How does one educate people about this phenomenon to the point that they will rise into action? In a country troubled by pressing socioeconomic concerns such as poverty and armed struggle, how does one make an entire nation realize that if not addressed urgently, climate change has catastrophic consequences both to the Philippines and to the rest of the world?

As a green activist, these questions guide me in engaging the different sectors of our society — from the youth to school teachers, from professionals to homemakers, from the common Pinoy to our national government — about climate change. Although the task sounds simple, it is actually daunting. Similar to each region’s creativity and resourcefulness in cooking the perfect adobo, I have to develop new and innovative tools in presenting the climate change story to suit each Pinoy’s palate. And with the barrage of information practically thrown at people by television, radio, newspapers, and even billboards, it is a constant challenge for me to elevate the issue from the noise.

Frankly, were I not part of Greenpeace, I would be having a hard time understanding climate change as well, and its relevance in my life. But I was exposed to Greenpeace early — in high school, in fact, when I read about the organization and its anti-whaling campaign in National Geographic. I remember being amazed on how passionate the activists were in voicing out their beliefs.

But I didn’t have the chance to get involved with Greenpeace until 1999, when I was already in college. Some friends of mine asked me if I want to help out during Greenpeace’s Toxics Free Asia Tour. I said yes! I tried to help out in any way I could, from printing shirts to guiding fellow students during the Rainbow Warrior open-boat days, to making sure my fellow volunteers had food during lunch. I became more involved in the group after graduation, helping organize public events, participating in actions, becoming a member of SolarGeneration (a youth group initiated by Greenpeace) and an activist. Today I’m the Climate & Energy Campaigner of Greenpeace Southeast Asia based in the Philippines.

OUR RAPID response team has borne witness and documented impacts of extreme weather events in the country, such as the 2004 drought in South Cotabato that affected almost 800,000 families in Mindanao, to the aftermath of typhoon Reming in the Bicol Region last December. These tragedies have resulted in the loss of lives and livelihood, as well as in the destruction of infrastructure. They have also amplified the lack of food and water and other basic services that majority of Filipinos suffer in provinces with high poverty incidence ratings.

The Philippines is a climate hotspot. As a developing country, with very little access to vital resources, it has a low ability to adapt and an even lower ability to cope with disasters brought about by the impacts of climate change. Yet, even with the emerging trends of climate variability, many provinces in the Philippines are still not aware of their vulnerability; much less are they able to prepare to cope with its impacts.

The amount of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide that humans have released since the Industrial Revolution has drastically altered the natural processes of our planet including the climate. Human-induced climate change was brought about by different sectors and activities such as deforestation, unsustainable agricultural practices, and improper waste management. But the biggest culprit of all has been the energy sector.

Almost 70 percent of the Philippines’ energy mix comes from power plants that burn fossil fuel such as coal — the most carbon intensive and polluting power source. Less than one percent of our energy comes from solar and wind power. Greenpeace has conducted a series of tests on the ash fields of coal-fired power stations in the Philippines, including the biggest in Sual, Pangasinan and the dirtiest in Calaca, Batangas. The results revealed the insidious presence in the coal plant waste stream of hazardous substances such as mercury (a deadly neurotoxin) and arsenic (a known carcinogen), and raised the possibility of widespread toxic contamination in host and neighbouring communities.

Aside from the toxins, a coal-fired power plant like the 1,200-megawatt one in Sual will, for the duration of its 25-year contract, produce 238.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, equivalent to more than 575.6 billion jeepneys simultaneously starting and traveling for a kilometer.

Although the government is well aware of these, it remains largely dependent on coal for its energy source. To us, it is clear that the well-being of Filipinos is being sacrificed by the government, which is also fueling climate change by expanding existing and building new coal-fired power stations in the country.

Of course, I’m no Al Gore. I don’t have his gravitas, and I can guess what people are probably thinking when they see someone as young as I am trying to talk to them about something that seems so complex. But I stand up and say what I have to say anyway, because I know if I do it right, they will cease to see the young woman before them and they will listen.

Fortunately, I don’t have to rely only on myself to convince people. Images, video footage, and maps have proven to be an effective tool in awakening Pinoys on the gravity of the situation.

Using the geographic information system (GIS), Greenpeace has mapped out areas in the Philippines that are under threat to sea-level rise because of climate change. As an archipelago with a coastline almost equal to the circumference of the earth, there is only one region in the Philippines not threatened by ocean water encroaching dry land: the Cordillera Administrative Region. This translates to displacement of families and damage to ecosystems such as beaches, mangroves, and coral reefs that are valued for its conservation efforts and tourism potential.

THE GREENPEACE sea level-rise maps have made it easier for people to understand what I am talking about when I do my spiels on climate change. These have also become part of our “Simple Lang, Save the Planet” campaign, which strives to educate and empower Pinoys from different walks of life to be part of the solution.

The campaign combines public outreach (school, village, and office tours), media (television commercials, print ads, and radio spiels) and new media (online petition and email groups) to introduce and amplify energy consciousness in Filipinos.

We also employ volunteers whom we call Climate Communicators for tours and exhibits. These volunteers include celebrities, students, architects, teachers, bankers, and homemakers. Each of them has gone beyond unplugging or switching off lights to reduce energy consumption and are now helping spread the word to the rest of the Philippines. Which is essentially this: A fundamental change in the way the world uses energy must take place within this decade in order to make a real difference in the fight to save the climate. To avert the worst impacts of climate change, the world must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2050.

This is possible through an energy revolution, which requires a massive uptake of renewable energy combined with aggressive energy efficiency measures. An energy revolution will drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions emitted in the atmosphere and pave the way for cleaner energy that ensures our country’s energy security and independence as well as a safe environment and future for everyone.

Now all that can leave a newcomer to green issues going, huh? Actually, when we began designing the campaign, we started with the premise that each person has his or her own reason for supporting any advocacy or initiative. So we developed climate-change talking points based on what we think will grab our audience’s attention. For example, for the youth, we emphasize that the impacts that we are now experiencing is but the onset of climate change. Which, if not mitigated, will have the younger generation bearing the effects of more severe impacts. This is an injustice that the youth should not allow, especially if the decision makers of the present can do something about it.

For parents, we point out that the future generation, including their children, will bear the brunt of the impacts of climate change if nothing is done about it now. But we are also careful to note that helping the environment will not have only future benefits, but can have profound impacts in the present. Turning energy conscious and becoming efficient in the use of energy, for instance, may mean lower power bills.

For school administrators, we tell them that electricity savings can result to the reallocation of resources to purchasing of books, improvement of facilities, salaries of faculty, and maintenance. We also tell them that our materials can be used for a public awareness campaign or can be included in the curriculum.

For older audience, we ask them how it was before compared to the present. Is it hotter now? Is there a change in storm patterns or severity? And finally for legislators or local government units, we note that landmark policies and initiatives on climate change adaptation and mitigation are legacies that will be remembered by their constituents.

HONESTLY, IF some people drink coffee to jolt them from an uneventful afternoon or chocolate to satisfy their sweet tooth, I need to engage with the youth from time to time to keep my creative juices flowing and to shed the cynicism I sometimes feel when talking to a politician.

Leadership and political will from our legislators can go a long way in the fight for our basic right to live in a clean and healthy environment. But the reality is, it is not often that one comes across lawmakers who have these qualities. As a result, policies that are supposed to safeguard the environment and the health of the Filipino people are sometimes sat on (like the Renewable Energy Bill that has been pending for almost 12 years now) or are so diluted that they become ineffective. There have been legislators who have supported certain initiatives of Greenpeace, but it is a constant struggle to keep them involved and engaged.

It has also been a challenge to lure ordinary people into discussions about climate change. And it doesn’t even matter if you’re talking to an urban or rural audience. Urban areas, although more up to date to what’s happening globally, have such fast-paced lifestyles that you need to jolt people harder so that they would take notice of you. Urbanites are bombarded with information that campaigners have to make sure that the issue is not drowned out by all the noise. In the rural areas, meanwhile, the challenges beyond the language gaps include competing with concerns like where dinner for that day is going to come from (if any is coming at all), land tenure, and armed conflict. Provincial communities have to be reminded that climate change impacts will aggravate these concerns.

Yet there have been instances where members of remote communities have left me with much hope. Once, I was invited to facilitate a basic discussion on climate change to members of the Youth Advocates for Peace (YAP) in Mindanao. I saw how much they value their culture, heritage, and the environment. These aspects are clearly integrated with who they are and what they believe in. Some of them live in impoverished communities or are caught in the middle of an armed struggle. But this does not limit them from taking a stand for their future and making a difference. The older generation, especially our government officials, can definitely learn from them.

At the very least, I came away from that event inspired, energized, and even more at peace with the career I have chosen for myself. With Greenpeace, I need not compromise my passion, beliefs, and my future, unlike many of my peers. Greenpeace strengthened how I see my place in this planet — that I am part of my environment and that whatever I do to this only home that we have will eventually affect me and the ones I care about.

For more details, log on to www.greenpeace.org.ph or email your questions at info@ph.greenpeace.org.

With gasoline, “going up and down the road from Muñoz, when I get to Edsa, the fuel gauge starts flickering,” says one taxi driver. But since he switched to LPG, he says, the gauge has been less prone to spasms.

There’s another plus to the increased use of LPG by taxis, though: it’s supposed to be a more environmentally friendly fuel than gasoline. The Department of Energy (DOE) says that compared to regular gasoline, auto-LPG has around 20 percent less ozone forming potential, at least 15 percent lower greenhouse gas emissions, and up to 80 percent less toxic emissions.

That’s partly why the government included auto-LPG in its alternative-fuels program, which it says it is undertaking not only to address environmental concerns, but also to attain energy self-sufficiency and security and contribute to the urbanization of rural areas. “Energy security means we have to enhance our uses of indigenous and other non-conventional or alternative uses of fuels,” says Mario Marasigan, director of DOE’s energy utilization and management bureau.

The primary aim, of course, is to reduce the country’s dependence on imported oil. And because the transport sector has guzzled in increasing amounts of oil for the last decade — even as total local consumption has gone down by two percent from 2000 to 2006 — it is supposed to be the initial beneficiary of the government program.

Admittedly, rising oil prices rather than environmental worries are the main driving force in the mad dash for alternative fuels worldwide. The Philippine government’s motivation is no different, but green campaigners nevertheless see its effort as a step forward. Vehicle emissions, after all, account for up to 80 percent of air pollution in the Philippines. Around 2,000 people die each year in the country’s major cities, such as Metro Manila, Davao, and Cebu, due to the effects of air pollution, says a 2002 World Bank study. More than 9,000 Filipinos suffer from chronic bronchitis annually because of pollution.

Taxis line up for LPG. [photo by Isa Lorenzo]

The transport sector is also one of the main sources of greenhouse gases, which contribute to global warming. A recent United Nations (UN) report says that transportation, including emissions from the production of transport fuels, is responsible for about one-fourth of global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions, and that this share is only getting bigger and bigger as time passes.

Yet some environmental groups such as Greenpeace cannot help but point out that biofuels used in transport represent a less direct solution to help reduce emission of greenhouse gases. “Biomass needs to be transformed to a liquid or gas form, which requires additional energy,” notes Greenpeace. The UN report in fact says that using biomass for combined heat and power rather than for transport fuel is the best option for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade.

THE ENERGY department doesn’t deny this, but it’s obvious that its more pressing concern at the moment is saving pesos for the government rather than saving the planet. Indeed, the government hasn’t given up on its oil and gas explorations just yet, even as it tests the viability of auto-LPG for taxis and biofuels like bioethanol and biodiesel for other vehicles. Natural gas is also being tapped for public buses. Still, according to Marasigan, the government is also looking into solar, hydropower, wind, and geothermal resources.

Which is just as well, since the alternative-fuels program is not exactly going at race-car speed (although it is still progressing at a pace faster than a Senate hearing). One major challenge in developing biofuels has been enlisting the support of private investors, says Marasigan. He says that while the new biofuels law offers investors incentives such as zero specific tax, exemption from the value-added tax, and assistance from government financial institutions, “it doesn’t mean that this will be enough for them to invest in the country.”

Developing feedstock for the biofuels is another nagging worry, with questions about land use only complicating matters. Ironically, the one potential feedstock that seems to be attracting interest from investors also has some experts hollering caution.

Jatropha, a wild fruit bush, has been around for centuries but is not native to the Philippines. Its seeds are poisonous, but these also yield oil that can be used in diesel engines. The government is still trying to determine which variety would work best on local soil, but that has not stopped one of its corporations from entering into multibillion-peso agreements involving jatropha.

This early, Philippine National Oil Company Alternative Fuels Corporation (PNOC-AFC) has already signed a memorandum of agreement with a Korean firm for a $210-million jatropha plantation and biorefinery. It has also inked a deal with the Land Bank of the Philippines to allocate P10 billion for the cultivation and propagation of the supposed wonder plant. The PNOC-AFC has even given P20 million in financial assistance to Bukidnon to propagate jatropha.

The converted LPG engine can be found in the trunk of a taxi. [photo by Isa Lorenzo]

But a recent study by agriculture professors from the University of the Philippines in Los Baños advises those who have become giddy over jatropha to study the facts first. According to the academics, jatropha becomes a viable source of biodiesel only if diesel is retailed at P40 per liter; if the crop has a high fruit yield of 36,000 kg per hectare; if the variety has a high rate of oil extraction (at least 34 percent); and if byproducts are included and provide 50-percent additional income from the oil revenue.

They say, though, that no jatropha variety grown in the Philippines yields 34-percent oil; current laboratory oil extraction rates range from 28 to 32 percent. At a low-yield level of 12,000 kg per hectare, jatropha becomes profitable for farmers growing it if the diesel price increases to about P140 per liter at a 30-percent rate of oil extraction (revenue from oil alone). This estimate excludes processing and marketing costs. Current estimates put the processing cost at P12 per liter, which means biodiesel from jatropha could actually cost P152 per liter.

The academics also say that there is also a five-year wait for the jatropha crop to reach optimum fruiting. The professors wonder whether the processing plants and the technological know-how to process raw oil into biodiesel and develop byproducts would be ready by this time.

WHAT IS not widely known, however, is that the diesel being sold locally already has some biofuel content. It’s actually a biodiesel blend that has one percent of coconut methyl ester (CME), which is sourced locally. Marasigan says that the country was able to produce 110 million liters of CME last year — more than enough for the 70 million liters needed for an annual supply of the biodiesel blend.

	SOME gasoline stations now sell bioethanol, which has a ten-percent ethanol blend. [photo by Isa Lorenzo]

Coconut oil is used to produce CME. Cocodiesel lowers the emission of nitrous oxide and sulfur oxide, which are the main contributors to smog. It also promotes more efficient combustion and less engine vibration, and is supposed to improve fuel economy by as much as 20 percent.

A survey conducted by the energy department showed improved engine emissions and overall performance, as well as reported increase in mileage. There were some negative comments in the survey, but the DOE says these were due to factors other than CME.

The one-percent CME in diesel was mandated to be in use nationwide by last April by the Biofuels Act of 2006, which was signed into law in January. In 2009, the CME content may go up to a minimum of two percent.

The biofuels law also mandates the use of at least a five-percent bioethanol blended into gasoline by 2009. After two years, the National Biofuels Board should determine the feasibility of using bioethanol, after which it can recommend a minimum 10-percent bioethanol blend.

Some oil companies are already offering gasoline with as much as 10-percent bioethanol blend. But unlike CME, the ethanol used by these companies is imported, since the Philippines has yet to have the capability to produce this. While the country’s first bioethanol plant is already being built in Negros Occidental, it is not scheduled to be in operation until next year. By 2009, 10 bioethanol plants will be needed to produce the country’s ethanol needs, but only three of these (including the Negros plant) are in the pipeline.

Industry statistics show that a total of some 26 million liters of ethanol-blended gasoline were sold nationwide last year. A liter of the blend is usually about P7 cheaper than the same amount of unleaded gasoline, but indications are those who opt for the former know it is the greener choice.

Most likely, locally produced ethanol will come from sugarcane. As it is, the Department of Agriculture has set aside 60,250 hectares for sugarcane that will eventually be used to produce 274 million liters of bioethanol. The government calculates that the 2009 bioethanol requirement will be 50 million liters less that amount.

Sugarcane ethanol can help reduce greenhouse gases, says Greenpeace. It also says sugarcane ethanol has a “positive energy balance,” which means that the end product generates more energy than required from its production. When sugarcane is used as a raw material for ethanol production, 8.3 units of energy is delivered for every unit of fossil fuel spent in production.

GLOBALLY, THE leader in sugarcane ethanol production is Brazil, which has a 30-year-old biofuel program. Interestingly, the Philippines began exploring the viability of biofuels about the same time as Brazil — only to drop the effort in the mid-1980s “due in part to domestic political turmoil, and in part to stable world oil prices,” say academics Raymond Tan and Alvin Culaba. At the time, the country was looking at two types of fuel: bioethanol, derived from sugarcane and used in a gasoline blend called alcogas, and biodiesel, derived from coconut oil and called cocodiesel. Two decades later, the Philippines is trying to pick up where it left off.

During the mid-1980s, almost all the cars sold in Brazil — which was apparently more serious about biofuels than any other country on the planet — ran exclusively on ethanol. Trouble came in early 1990s, however, when low oil prices led the government to remove subsidies on ethanol. High sugar prices also discouraged production. This led car manufacturers to find a cheap way for a car to burn both ethanol and gasoline. In 2003, the first flexifuel car was introduced in Brazil. Today 85 percent of the cars sold there are flexifuel.

VEHICLE emissions are responsible for about one-fourth of global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. [photo by Isa Lorenzo]

Yet for all of Brazil’s success with ethanol, it is hardly the perfect model for biofuel development, says Greenpeace climate and energy campaigner Jasper Inventor. “We certainly believe that it has reached a point where it’s not sustainable anymore,” he says. “It’s reached a point where you’re cutting forests in the Amazon (to grow sugarcane), where there’s actually some form of modern-day slave labor in plantations.”

It’s not certain how similar efforts elsewhere will end up. In the United States, where alternative fuels regained popularity some seven years ago, corn is the feedstock of choice for biofuel, even if experts say it is less “efficient” than sugarcane. The U. S. Congress has mandated that 7.5 billion gallons (28 billion liters) of the country’s fuel should come from ethanol or biodiesel by 2010. That’s equal to less than one percent of the annual U.S. fuel consumption. The United States, home of the gas-chugalugging SUVs and Inconvenient Truth Teller Al Gore, ranks first worldwide in terms of annual volume of greenhouse gas emissions.

Experts say that even if the entire U.S. corn and soybean corps were turned into biofuel, it would replace just 12 percent of the country’s yearly gasoline consumption and six percent of its diesel consumption. In the meantime, U.S. scientists are looking for ways to improve the energy balance and greenhouse benefits of corn ethanol by creating a “closed-loop system,” where cow manure would be used as biogas to create biofuel.

As for the Philippines (which ranks 38 among the top 50 greenhouse gas emitting countries), Marasigan says that the government will explore other types of fuel such as the extraction of methane from solid waste — aside from coal gasification and coal-bed methane. But as far as public buses are concerned, it’s placing its bet on compressed natural gas (CNG) that will see bus operators shelling out half the amount they are now spending for diesel. Natural gas is lead-free, produces practically no sulfur oxides or particulates and up to 30 percent less carbon dioxide than diesel.

The government’s compressed natural gas plan, however, is stretched out for completion in seven years, although anytime now 200 CNG-fed buses (with 185 already allotted to particular bus firms) will be arriving from abroad. Shell is also committed to selling CNG by the end of this month, albeit with just four stations offering this. (There is a move as well by the Philippine LPG Bus and Taxi Co. Inc. to pilot-test next month 10 buses running on LPG. The company plans to import up to 200 buses.)

Marasigan says that the near future of biofuels includes cellulosic technology, which produces energy from sustainable agricultural and forestry wastes. The DOE, he says, needs to keep on studying alternative fuels for the transport sector so that the department can achieve its goal of 60-percent energy security for the country by 2010. As Marasigan sees it, the bottom-line definition of energy security is being in a situation in which “whatever happens internationally, the country will have an ample supply of energy.”

At present, he says, the Philippines has already achieved energy security of more than 55 percent. Marasigan thinks achieving 100-percent energy security is improbable “unless we produce our own crude oil in (a) big quantity.”

Perish that un-green thought.

We start with energy, with our discussions including a look at the law that privatized the local power industry. But we take up the issue of energy with an eye mainly on its impact on the environment, and with the thinking that — to paraphrase the International Energy Agency (IEA) — since power has been part of many environmental problems, including climate change, then it must be part of the solution. Some of the stories we have lined up thus explore renewable energy resources like wind power, as well as what environmentalists like to describe as more “efficient” uses of energy by corporations and by individuals.

We then move on to scrutinize how else we have managed to muck up our environment (and consequently have jeopardized our health). Obviously it’s not going to be a very pretty picture that we will be presenting, but for all we know, it’s a picture that might actually prompt some people to start checking if they have ecologically questionable habits of their own, or have them consider joining groups or activities that promote green practices. In any case, we promise to have some good news, if only to show that while we may be our (and the environment’s) own poison, we are also our own antidote.

Here’s a bit of early good news: After years of acting as if its member countries were unaffected by climate change, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has finally begun talking about the issue and has put it among the top items in its agenda for its upcoming summit in Singapore in November.

Then again, we really don’t have to wait for those in power to act for change to happen (although that would obviously help a lot). Even physicist Amory B. Lovins, cofounder and chairperson of the U.S.-based environmental “think and do tank” Rocky Mountain Institute, says there is no dearth in the things an ordinary person can do to promote energy efficiency that can help nurse the earth back to health.

According to Newsweek, Lovins himself lives “in a house that can run on the same amount of energy as a conventional light bulb.” Ever the optimist, he also told the international newsmagazine recently, “I think we will look back in a few decades and wonder what all the oil fuss was about because…we will have made this product obsolete. Oil is going to become, and has already become, uncompetitive, even at low prices, before it becomes unavailable even at high prices. So we will leave it on the ground. It’s very good for holding up the ground, but it won’t be worth extracting.”

Gouache on Handmade Paper by Nunelucio Alvarado/Melvin Calderon Collection

PARANOIA AND guilt are among the occupational hazards of covering the environment. I have not had too many moments of ease while learning all I can about the overwhelming threats to the planet.

You can feel self-righteously detached from other subjects like government corruption and crime (i.e., the guilty ones are not me). But on the environment beat, it’s hard not to imagine a personal responsibility for at least some of the ills our earth is heir to-garbage, air pollution, or even open-pit mining (oh no, this computer I’m using contains mined resources).

The paranoia comes from the sense of endless siege from environmental dangers. Reporting on crime can also fill a journalist’s mind with dread, but one can at least feel immune to it by escaping to, let’s say, a high-security mall. But how does one escape global warming?

So it was inevitable that a sprinkling of paranoia and guilt got mixed up with the tremendous joy I felt when I heard the news about my coming first-born. My wife Ipat and I had waited seven years for that news, withstanding the family pressures and whispered rumors that accompany such a long wait. But that was time also spent thinking about such things as an intriguing article I once read about a human extinction movement, where people chose not to reproduce until our species just faded away. It was the most radical way I had heard of to save the earth.

Yet I knew no matter how much I wanted to save the planet, I just as dearly wanted to have a kid, even just one. Human extinction was not going to be one of my options.

Still, it seemed like nature had other plans for us for quite a while. So when our fertility doctor finally confirmed on the ultrasound what the pregnancy test told us, we were stunned. That lovely throbbing spot on a black and white monitor was not just our baby-to-be, it was living proof that hey, we really were part of the web of life, along with algae and frogs, and it felt great.

After the initial happiness, though, anxiety started setting in. We had long worried about my wife’s health, her asthma attacks induced by the thick air pollution around our subdivision, a floating soup of white dust from a nearby cement factory combined with the darker particles from vehicular traffic. Since our advocacy against air pollution had so far been ignored by both government and industry, the short-term remedy called for chemical steroids that enabled Ipat to breathe.

But the ingestion of chemicals was a mixed blessing at best. Chemical poisoning and its effects on animal reproduction, after all, was the subject of A Stolen Future, a grim book both Ipat and I read while pondering human reproduction.

When pregnancy did occur, we seemed to face a Solomonic choice: the risk to the baby of chemical exposure in the womb, or the threat of asthma from not using the chemicals. In the end, after consulting our doctor, we decided that not protecting the mother would be a greater danger to the baby. But it was a lesser evil that still filled us with dread.

We did eventually move out of that dusty subdivision to another part of the big city. But Metro Manila is a smorgasbord of dangers to the unborn. Much of our food contained untold pesticides, our water was contaminated by lead pipes, and so on down the line of nightmare-inducing environmental hazards. This was the world our baby would be born in, surely much worse than the earth I inherited in 1961, four billion people ago. It wasn’t my fault of course that the world ended up this way. But had I done enough to make it better?

The growing anxiety created a dire need to relax, so one day we took refuge in a movie theater, where we saw a film that was said to be a lesson in crafting realism. It was only at the height of the action in “Black Hawk Down”-the story of the bloody US military fiasco in Somalia that was said to presage the urban hell of present-day Baghdad-that I realized that all that realistic mayhem and acoustic warfare could have some traumatic effect on our baby. Add another dash of guilt to the brew of emotions.

After nine months of this roller coaster, which included confidence-boosting Lamaze lessons, we were finally in the hospital for The Moment. We dared not voice our fears, but as well informed as we were, we yearned for blissful ignorance for a change. The Lamaze lessons became useless when the baby refused to come out the natural way and he had to be surgically extracted. My knees were wobbly, but my video camera was rolling when the baby entered the visible world, his eyes wide open, looking at the strange contraption pointed at him without a hint of fear or even surprise.

All his body parts were intact. He cried. He was normal! I suddenly felt relieved, relaxed, and very human.

That was two years ago. The baby has become a frisky, talkative toddler. Alon Roberto Luna Severino eats organic food, has never tasted softdrink, and still breastfeeds. He’s healthy and happy, without any evidence of chemical or movie-induced trauma.

His parents’ generation has not been able to save the earth, the causes of our paranoia and guilt growing all the time. But now we also have a reason to feel optimistic and grateful. Perhaps this baby is a sign, at least to his parents, that maybe, just maybe, we pushed doomsday to a later date.

Howie G. Severino is a writer, producer and cameraman with GMA 7. He also sits as a member of the board of editors of the PCIJ.