This column wants to discuss more specific (and viable) ventures that the Overseas-Filipino contract workers and immigrants (OFCWI) can do. Funding the bold initiatives may come from an Overseas-Filipino Monetary Fund (OFMF), which is now on the planning stage, and from investments and grants from foreign sources. The projects are designed to become the Filipino (and the OFCWI’s) tools in the fight against global warming, AKA climate change.

As the New York Times puts it: "Far from rejecting the idea (of restoring Louisiana's vanishing wetlands), state officials have embraced it, motivated not just by the lessons of Hurricane Katrina but also by growing fears that global climate change will bring rising seas, accelerating land loss and worse weather."

As I have been writing, it is time for the Philippines, the Filipino people and the OFCWI to address the topic of global warming (climate change) before it is too late.

Global Warming

It seems that the Filipino policymakers and decision makers have been talking about everything under the sun, except the forecasted climate change.

This is the primary motivation for writing this series of articles about the need for a Filipino version of "The Manhattan Project" (TMP), so as to prepare our people for the rising of the sea level, hopefully not on a Biblical scale.

This column has already mentioned the need to have windmill farms, solar and mini-hydro (and micro-hydro) energy ventures. We suggested also that every Philippine region plant annually a minimum of one-million hardwood-tree varieties with cacao and coffee trees planted in between them, which trees might be used when harvested to retire the foreign loans obtained to fund the development.

Perhaps the Filipino people and their leaders may be able to do the following additional initiatives, aside from conducting an immediate census and/or audit of every barangay (village), town, city, province and region of their respective human, natural and industrial resources, present industries (from cottage to manufacturing industries) and other private-and-government infrastructures:

1.0             A national emergency policy of prohibiting the burning of rice, corn or sugarcane stalks, grasses and other vegetation discarded after harvests, all of which should be disposed in compost or in methane-generating pits.

2.0             A crash program to convert the engines of tricycles from a two-stroke to a four-stroke type. Everybody knows that a two-stroke engine uses motor oil as part of its fuel and does not burn it totally. Or even phase out gradually the operation of hundreds of thousands of tricycles from urban streets or population centers and replace them with Green vehicles such as mini-, medium- and large buses, which can also double as school buses.

3.0             A revival of the manufacture of bicycles (preferably with bamboo components), so that people can pedal to their work or short destination and exercise at the same time. The same can be done with lawn mowers, so that manually-operated ones become the vogue.

4.0             A crash course to develop cleaner non-fossil (green) fuel such as ethanol and biodiesel, as Brazil has been doing for decades now. Doing this option will also boost farm incomes and resurrect the sugarcane and coconut industries.

5.0             The conversion of city and provincial buses from diesel to (compressed natural) gas-powered units. Perhaps the Philippine government may also develop the political will to persuade the drivers and their federations to phase out the jeepneys in city routes and convert them to CNG-powered buses.

6.0             The banning of leaded fuel and the mandatory use of catalytic converters in the automobiles and vehicles presently being operated in the country.

7.0             The construction of provincial or town low-tech sewage treatment plants (as that found in Arcata, California) and for metropolitan areas, the high-tech type (like the Hyperion plant in Los Angeles, California, as the model), so as to recycle the water for irrigation purposes and help heal the country’s bays and estuaries.

There are other ways that engineers and technocrats may be able to come up, using proven methods to lessen the emission of harmful gases and smog.

The General Electric’s slogan, “Imagination at Work,” may be the guiding spirit for this crash course AKA the Filipino version of TMP. To use a pun intentionally, the sky is the limit in fighting global warming if only our people can generate the right political will and funding sources. # # #