It was another strong earthquake, 5.9 on the Richter scale.
I leapt from bed and called on all in the house to evacuate. Then the violent shaking stopped as suddenly as it had begun. It was over but taking no chances, the volunteers hurried outside. Standing a safe distance from the sturdy building, the earthquake reminded us all of the powerful destructive forces on the planet which we live in and depend on for our existence; an earth that we need to respect and care for.
The heaving and trembling of the earth, the rattling roof, and the shaking buildings, were a vivid reminder of that shocking and terrible day when Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1991. It began with a violent tremor that grew in strength. I was trying to stand upright as the ground shook when Mt. Pinatubo, thirty kilometers away, blew with mighty boom. Within seconds, it was belching what seemed like a billion cubic meters of ash and a thousand tons of rock into the sky.
I was stunned, awe-struck, amazed and stood transfixed in wonder while gazing at this spectacular. Huge burning volcanic debris continued to shoot upwards like a New Year’s fireworks display.
The black thick clouds of ash and smoke that billowed upwards crept across the face of the blazing tropical sun and quickly covered it, turning day into night. The lightning was continuous, the bolts shot through the darkness burning a flaming path through the sulfur-laden clouds.
This planet, a place of wonders and incredible beauty, is but a tiny speck of dust in the vast expanse of the galaxy. It makes us ask – why? Why are we humans the only conscious, self-aware life form that contemplates the universe, asking where it came from and wondering how something so grand came from nothing but a big bang? Since we are of the universe, have come from it and are part of it, it is like the universe contemplating itself through us. The Creator is in the universe and we can be one with Him when we love and protect creation.
The planet was showing its power and majesty against which the human species, the one with the big brains, stupidly and arrogantly set out to challenge. The voracious appetite and overwhelming greed of the human species is changing the atmosphere to such an extent that the planet’s fragile climate and ecosystem are changing too.
“Burn, burn, burn!” is the cry of the capitalists and communists and all the money-making moguls who drill, dig, bore, pump and excavate the fossil fuels that create a human volcano. We are burning coal, oil, wood, and belching clouds of fire and smoke into the environment. This is heating the planet to the point of no return. The tipping point is close; there can be no going back if we don’t act now.
There will be no safe future for the next generations. We see droughts and floods, climate extremes that cause massive forest and bush fires, pumping clouds of polluting acrid fog of CO2 that choke and poison everyone who breathes.
The oceans absorb some of the CO2 that turns the waters into an acidic bath. Fish species are threatened with extinction. What is left is scooped up in huge nets for the tables of the moguls while a billion people go without.
What is happening? The planet is covered in a shroud of greenhouse gas, the sun is beating down the earth, the hot air cannot escape, trapped beneath the shroud of gases. The ice sheets are melting fast, the sun’s rays cannot be reflected back into space and, instead, heat the oceans; waters rise up to flood millions of homes.
The waters of rivers and seas warm up, the fish cannot adapt and they die. The coral reefs, the feeding ground of fish, are dying too. It’s a real scenario of doom and gloom. But it is not fiction as some would have us believe. We can stop it. With a warmer world, more ocean water will evaporate to fill the skies, the cold and hot air streams collide; typhoons come raging in, destroying everything in their path.
This is what the global conferences on climate change are all about: to stop the burning and heating, and to use renewable sources of energy like wind and solar power.
Later this year, the conference in Paris will be crucial; there has to be a binding agreement among nations to limit the burning of fossil fuels to hold down the planet’s temperature.
