I have to confess that I was struck dumb when I was pontificating to my second son about the evils of SUVs - having just watched "An Inconvenient Truth" - when he retorted that it was my generation’s irresponsibility that was the cause of global warming. Truth to tell I hadn’t thought about it from that point of view. But due to the fierceness of typhoons like Katrina and Millenio and the warning that there would be more of them this year, that summers would be distressingly and increasingly warmer and that extremes in weather conditions were what we could expect, it occurred to me that not one of our leaders was addressing the problem. Of course, given their limited abilities it is understandable that they can only focus on one thing at a time and at the moment that One Thing has everything to do with getting themselves elected to public office. Their track record however doesn’t fill us with confidence; we can be sure that none of them will seriously bother with the environment after the campaign.

During my teens I read several books that altered my way of thinking. Simone de Beauvoir’s "The Second Sex," is one. Having been orphaned at an early age and brought up by my mother and sisters, De Beauvoir’s theme on the essence of woman appealed to my antipathy towards a patriarchal system and belief in women’s rights. Another was John Knowles "A Separate Peace," about trust, betrayal, friendship, and finding your true identity was important at an age when you question who and what you are. Then there was Lawrence Sterne’s "Tristram Shandy" with its repeated images of human un-relatedness and disconnection and the implied suggestion that perhaps human beings remain forever isolated had tremendous appeal. Throughout this adolescence it was a pleasure to counter – at least mentally – the teachings of society since convent girls were at least outwardly supposed to conform.

Conformity never did hold any appeal. I have held firm to the belief that despite Filipinas’ seeming freedom the majority are still shackled by society’s strictures and by a poverty that dictates men should have preference when it comes to education. Her acceptance as well of life as "a veil of tears" and the redemptive powers of suffering has proven inimical to changing a system that no longer works. But what I want to get to is that soon after Sterne came John Donne and his concept that contrary to Sterne’s premise "no man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee." (Meditation XVII)

This sense of community with the entire world (not to mention our next door neighbor and even the members of our barangay) is something that has been totally lacking in us. If it doesn’t concern close relatives we couldn’t care less. Are we really interested in what is happening in Darfur? What about the injustices committed at Guantanamo – do we even know where the prison is located?

This is what makes the climate changes so dangerous and terrifying; since we barely connect to the rest of the nation we don’t grasp that as part of humanity we have been responsible for altering this planet’s climate with disastrous results for our children and grandchildren.

I have actually heard friends state that it won’t matter because they’d be dead by then or that their offspring could always move to Kansas. We really do not have a sense of urgency or moral responsibility as a nation and are more concerned with Kris Aquino’s love life or which celebrities will grace the halls of our Batasan or Senate than in the fact that we are destroying the only planet that can hold life as we know it.

It may be of course that the educated among us don’t grasp the dangers at all. In that case it’s up to the leadership to inform the public that there is clear and imminent danger and that the possibility of drought, lack of potable water, disease and famine are just as threatening as a jihad. The sad part is that our system is inimical to an informed public and yet it is this majority that will suffer the most. Unfortunately, a political campaign based on what kind of a country and ultimately what kind of world we want to live in is unlikely to get anyone elected to even dogcatcher around here.