HOTSPOT

We've been hearing a lot of warnings from friends who are into horoscopes to be careful during "mercury retrograde." It turns out, a more urgent problem is out there, oppressing us daily: Mercury rising. Yes, we've been experiencing (and enduring!) extraordinarily-high temperatures and heat indices in the past few weeks and months.
This is not the same high temperatures of decades past, and so our parents and grandparents cannot tell us to endure it just like how they did it. As climate scientists and weather forecasters would tell us, what’s happening is different.
For instance, the heat has been unbearable that many school children have reportedly passed out, and some schools have moved classes outdoors or back to hybrid mode. Sadly, there’s no relief in sight about these rising temperatures in the Philippines and the rest of the world.
This week, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said “global temperatures are likely to surge to record levels in the next five years, fueled by heat-trapping greenhouse gases and a naturally occurring El Niño event.”
The world would most likely reach the warmest record temperature in the near future.
“There is a 66 percent likelihood that the annual average near-surface global temperature between 2023 and 2027 will be more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for at least one year.  There is a 98 percent likelihood that at least one of the next five years, and the five-year period as a whole, will be the warmest on record,” said the WMO.
Would we be able to go back to the temperatures of times past?
Dr. Leon Hermanson, a WMO expert scientist, has this to say: “Global mean temperatures are predicted to continue increasing, moving us away further and further away from the climate we are used to.” A WMO report said that “the annual mean global near-surface temperature for each year between 2023 and 2027 is predicted to be between 1.1°C and 1.8°C higher than the 1850-1900 average. This is used as a baseline because it was before the emission of greenhouse gases from human and industrial activities.”
The proposals to move back the school opening to June should thus be seriously considered. School buildings, offices and houses may need to be retrofitted or redesigned to be more ventilated and cooler, as we face rising temperatures. How this could be done with minimal or even without traditional air conditioning could be addressed by our experts in engineering and architecture.
But considering the real problem is a global one, the high and oppressive heat indices should compel us as a country to demand and join global actions.
As the WMO stresses, this is a problem that goes beyond individual or even community efforts: “In addition to increasing global temperatures, human-induced greenhouse gases are leading to more ocean heating and acidification, sea ice and glacier melt, sea level rise and more extreme weather.”
By extreme weather, it has meant for us super typhoons of up to Category 5, and extraordinarily-strong monsoon rains that we have never before experienced. Such extreme weather events hit the poorest and most economically-disadvantaged sectors the hardest and have become a constant threat to micro, small and medium-scale enterprises.
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions required national and global efforts directed at modern, multinational and transnational corporations, and the conspicuous consumption they promote and profit from. Even novel ideas such as cryptocurrency has energy consumption and consequently possibly fossil fuel-related problems. It has been reported that Bitcoin alone is estimated to consume 127 terawatt-hours a year — more than many countries, including Norway.
The Philippines signed the Paris Agreement in 2016 and ratified it in 2021. How exactly the Philippines intends to contribute to attaining long-term goal, we’re not aware of, as of the moment. But the goal is there: “Reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to limit the global temperature increase in this century to 2 °C while pursuing efforts to limit the increase even further to 1.5 °C, to avoid or reduce adverse impacts and related losses and damages.”
This means a lot of campaigning, lobbying, asserting, and doing would be needed. It is not as if corporations would just cooperate and let climate change mitigation affect their bottom lines.
In the meantime, drink your water, give water to others, stay under the shade, read up on climate change, and together with family and friends join movements. We have to press officials, policy-makers, political parties and business leaders to finally take up climate change as a major existential threat to our lives.
With mercury rising, so should our movements rise.