It is undeniable that climate change is real. Over the past two decades, we have been hit with 10 of the worst typhoons in history, including the unforgettable Typhoon Ondoy (2009) and Typhoon Yolanda (2013). Year after year, the Philippines is battered with storms so frequent that sometimes, weather analysts go through the alphabet and repeat after running out of letters to name typhoons with.

It wasn’t so before. In the 1970s, storms were less powerful and less frequent. One notable exception was super typhoon Yoling, with wind speeds up to 200 kph. I distinctly remember it as I was in my third year pre-med in UP Diliman when it hit. Metro Manila was flooded for days and we had to drive around in knee-deep floodwaters.

During other storms, I was marooned in my car for hours by floodwaters, and during at least two occasions, spent the night in it. So, I am used to what is being experienced these days.

Flooding is more than just a temporary inconvenience. Many lives are lost, infrastructure is destroyed, livelihoods, especially of daily earners, are wrecked, students’ education suffers from the many disruptions throughout the year, productivity drops and billions of pesos worth of crops are consigned to the garbage bin.

What’s worst is that even if we don’t have typhoons, the effects of the monsoon season still paralyses all activity in the affected areas. So, at the slightest indication of heavy rainfall, government offices are closed and classes are suspended. The students may enjoy their rainy holidays but are left with massive learning deficits that leave us in the dust of other countries’ students’ academic prowess. Without government office transactions for permits and other government requirements, much economic activity stops or slows down. Our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) also drops.

But let’s face it. It may be the “new normal,” as the president declared recently, but it doesn’t mean we just have to grin and bear it. We have had decades to prepare, and even a master plan proposed by architect and environmental advocate Felino Palafox Jr. in the 1970s. Yet, successive governments have turned a blind eye to the problem up to now.

Instead, we have huge sums of money supposedly allocated for “flood control,” but we continue to suffer the effects of monsoon rains and floods even without typhoons. It is a no-brainer where the money went, even without the COA doing an audit. All we have to do is check social media for the latest memes such as a poster, proclaiming the flood control project of a local official, lying half-submerged in floodwaters. You can’t get any more ironic than that.

Instead of allocations for “flood control projects” for individual cities, districts or provinces, what we really need is an integrated national flood control program that is funded as one piece and which should be carried through successive administrations. It goes without saying that the money allocated should be spent only for that purpose, and not go into some politicians’ pockets to fund their next election campaigns as a political dynasty.

The science is there, we have good technocrats who have implemented such flood control programs in other countries before, but what’s missing is the political will to get this going.

Instead of just saying “This is the new normal, let’s learn to live with it,” the President should take the initiative to come up with such a project that if implemented successfully, will earn him the respect and admiration of the citizens. A veteran journalist has said that he had seen both presidents, father and son, go on aerial surveys of flooded provinces. Such déjà vu invites odious comparisons and commentaries that these were just “press releases” and earning “pogi’ points while not having done anything about the long-standing situation.

Otherwise, we are doomed to an ever-present danger of flooding and its debilitating effects on the country, and especially on the poor and marginalized, who are reduced to begging for “ayuda,” or aid in re-election of corrupt politicians and their dynastic families. This sets up a vicious cycle where these citizens repeatedly vote for the “ayuda” politicos in their misplaced gratitude, not knowing the aid they receive is from the taxes they pay.

Yes, we all pay taxes. The poor actually bear the brunt of consumption taxes in the guise of “Value Added Tax ” (VAT). Well, there is no value in those taxes if they just disappear into the pockets of our “honorable” officials. Please wake up, and vote for those who truly serve the citizenry.

Or when the next really massive flood comes, we will need a Noah’s Ark 10,000 times bigger, to accommodate us all. But who will build that for us, them again?