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Two weeks ago, I received a text message from my friend, Tony Oposa,
one of the country’s top environmental lawyers, saying that he is
going to be given the very prestigious International Environmental
Law Award, the first Asian to get the award. Tony runs a school in
Bantayan Island in Cebu that provides paralegal trainings to both
government and private individuals to strengthen law enforcement in
the Visayas. His school runs on renewable energy and is every inch
environment-friendly. Sometime ago, he sent me a long email on his
thoughts about oil and cars.
Tony says that the Philippines consumes
about 300,000 barrels of oil per day. At $100 per barrel, we
therefore spend $30 million per day, or almost $1 billion per month,
or $12 billion per year. Translated into Philippine pesos, the
numbers run up to P0.5 trillion (or P500 billion) per year. In
other words, we are burning oil—and money—faster than we can
make it. And all these just for the simple chore of taking us from
one point to another? Not very smart. Let us remember the basics:
The Third Law of Ecology states that “Everything has a price.”
Because we insist on individual mobility and the
false “freedom of the road” afforded by cars all of us are
suffering from collective immobility. Because each of us wants to
move on her own, all of us end up not moving at all. Very smart. The
car-based transportation system is extremely wasteful. Sitting down,
we occupy only about 1/3 of a square meter. Standing up, one
occupies even less space. But with a car we expand our space
requirement geometrically. A minimum of 10 sq. meters is needed just
to park a car. Moving that car takes up much, much more space.
One full tank of gasoline (or diesel) costs more
than one sack of rice. Thus, every time we fill up our gas tanks, we
could already feed our families with the sack of rice for one whole
month, or even longer. But because of the lack of a safe and
convenient alternative, we will have to burn hard-earned money for
the simple chore of bringing ourselves from one point to another.
A car has to be registered, insured, and
maintained (change of oil, tires, etc.) It adds up to quite a bundle
every month, certainly much more than we can afford. Because we have
become so dependent on cars and vehicular transport, we no longer
walk and have become sedentary. As a result, we lose the health
benefits of walking, one of the best forms of exercise.
But why do we stick to this mindset and way of
thinking? In the field of socio-psychology, this is probably called
the “inertia of collective insanity.” To be sure, this
“motoring madness” is less than one hundred years old. When we
saw the U.S. and other so-called “developed countries” use cars
in the mid-20th century, the rest of the world played “monkey
see-monkey do”. We all wanted the same independence and luxury of
individual travel. Thus, the whole world plunged into the cesspool
of the car-based mindset without really thinking there was the space
to allow individual travel at will, and without really thinking
whether we had the fuel and materials to make so many for all of us.
I think Tony wrote all of these not to attack
the automotive industry but as a result of an attack of gas pain.
But he is right when he said that humans are the only animals on
Earth that poison the very air that it breathes and the very water
it drinks. And yet, it calls itself “wise”.
director@haribon.org.ph
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