Read this in The Manila Times digital edition.
MOST people, even those who are among the best-educated and most aware of climate change and its impacts, probably do not realize it yet, but the month of July 2023 will likely be recorded as the tipping point of Earth's environment, the moment when global warming became a clear and present danger. No longer is it perceived as an evolving condition that will have dire consequences by some arbitrary future date, such as the year 2050 or the end of the century, but rather as an immediate, deadly threat.
In a somewhat perverse way, this is a good thing. One of the biggest obstacles to implementing measures for climate mitigation and adaptation has always been the difficulty in getting the public's and policymakers' acceptance of conditions that, being science-based and forward-looking, are necessarily abstractions. People make intellectual connections and accept or reject concepts based on their own sensory experiences. A person who has experienced an extreme weather event, particularly one that is not part of the usual pattern, is more likely to accept the fact of climate change and the fact that something needs to be done about it than someone who has not had that experience; there have been numerous studies that confirm this.
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