Is Congress already irrelevant? Isn’t it time to shift to a parliamentary form of government? Or, God forbid, a tyranny?

If some are saying that the Philippines will recover, and will be out of the orbit of the global meltdown this year, why is the World Bank only forecasting a 0.05 percent growth while the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts a miserable zero growth for the Philippines in 2009?

If we are so concerned with global warming, why are the vandals and enemies of the environment go unpunished?

Seriously speaking, these are dizzying and too confusing for the common people to digest and absorbed in the midst of conflicting views and analyses.

For these reasons, while the Arroyo administration, at best, is coping with a deteriorating economic environment not of our own making, and focusing on alleviating hardship and poverty at the lowest stratum of society without the cooperation and partnership of Congress, it becomes even more urgent that this nation pursues what former President Fidel V. Ramos had always advocated and achieved which is U.S.T. (Unity, Solidarity, Teamwork) without which we will just be going in circles.

First, as long as Philippine political leaders do not have the political will and determination to address the population issue, the per capita income and per capita living standard of the people will remain mired in poverty as efforts at food sufficiency, housing, education, infrastructure, and medical care will automatically be neutralized by the annual population addition.

Second, the Philippines is blessed with vast natural resources, plentiful rainfall, rich volcanic soil, fertile alluvial plains, bountiful marine resources, and a tested resilient people.

Alas, in view of the growing global concern for earth warming, the Philippines generally has squandered over the years its natural resources, and every government since then has only paid lip service to environmental rehabilitation and reforestation.

It is ironic, for example, that Japan, which was the major importer of Philippine logs and timber through no fault of the Japanese but the wanton greed of Filipino timber concessionaires and exporters, has maintained a 70 percent forest cover that preserves Japan’s unique beauty and ecology.

In other words, the Philippines, which is one of the worst managed natural resource region, should now wake up to the fact that its usually benign climate and even rainfall are obviously being adversely affected by climate change and global warming.

Incidentally, hosting beauty contests, “Miss Earth”, and parading young beauty contestants will not help mitigate the global warming if the “kaingeros” and “carabao loggers” are not being educated or punished.

That is, unless there is a universal geoengineering actions and rules and regulations against global warming, the tipping point to disaster will soon be realized as the ice caps and glaciers melt; sea levels are rising; seasons are topsy-turvy; and “La Niña” comes when it should have been “El Niño,” etc….

Thus, the Philippines, though not highly industrialized, is nevertheless an example of environmental disaster from wanton greed, government passivity, and insensibility to humane society.

When all is said and done, it appears that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is left to her own devices in coping not only with the externally-induced economic crisis but also the real and growing threat of global warming in a bald and ravaged Philippines.

You be the judge. (For comments and views, please e-mail: chaff_fromthegrain@yahoo.com.ph)