TURNING POINT: Hungry and Angry: The Reason for Being

NAAWAN, Misamis Oriental (MindaNews / 18 June) — Everything is interconnected and there’s a reason for every unfolding of event.

The unbridled human greed for possession, satisfaction and comfort has wantonly destroyed the environment, resulting in global warming and climate change. Severe weathers are currently experienced: a freezing winter on this side of the planet that hardens everything and a sizzling summer on the other, triggering bushfires that turn everything on their paths to ashes. At the same time elsewhere, wild hurricanes wipe out everything that stood their way; and floods drown cities and habitations in some other places, even in urban deserts.

Only a few years back, scientists predicted that various diseases would soon surface as the balance of nature is heavily disturbed by the massive destruction of the environment and by the ravages of climate change.

Without sign and warning, the COVID-19 pandemic emerged and turned the world upside down. It halted to a screech the global economy for some two years. Industrial activities and the burning of fossil fuel in the streets and in the skies suddenly stopped. For the first time in the last 50 years of the century, the air was fresher and cleaner.

For the first time, there was global effort and cooperation to protect lives – to stop the virus. It is apparently successful. The virus lost its sting with the worldwide distribution of the Covid-19 vaccines. The number of casualties from the viral infection has dramatically been reduced to non-worrying figures. 

Thus, people are out of their refuge. The gas stations are pumping again. The industries pollute and darken the skies again. The earth is back to square one.

Then out of the blue, Putin, in his greed for possession, power and recognition, invaded Ukraine. The scare of the Russo-Ukraine war is not so much the threat of nuclear war but the gripping ramifications of the scarcity of fossil fuel worldwide. The tightening of supply has kept on spiking the price to dizzying height unprecedented in modern times. Some economies are on the verge of collapse. Governments are facing civil disturbances for their inability to cope with the situation.

The wheels of industries may stop turning again. Gas stations may also stop pumping very soon. Jobs disappear. Food gets scarce. People go hungry and angry.

The air, though, will be cleaner again.

But no amount of clean air will placate a hungry and angry stomach.

(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. William R. Adan, Ph.D., is retired professor and former chancellor of Mindanao State University at Naawan, Misamis Oriental)