Arnel Francis

“We can change”-was the favorite upsetting liner used in the movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still” which showed the condemning nature of man to bargain- an offshoot of his selfishness and an exhibit of his delaying tactics of accepting retributions. An embrace of sci-fi cum philosophical lash was what made “The Day the Earth Stood Still” an unlooked for upturn of current movie trends. It blared the idea clearly that “we don’t own this planet”. For truly an equating adage that says the “Earth doesn’t need us humans!” We never were PROTECTORS of it in the first place. Just like the biblical rebirth of the Earth, the great ark was brought to fruition in the movie by a cosmic intervention telling us that we don’t own THIS PLANET and that any decision is not within our grip. Unaware that its toll maybe the great Noah’s ark in disguise, global climate change, escalating biodiversity loss and population growth, natural calamities and even wars, continually ally our paths into sieving out the ...

How Much Water Do We Need People live and culture flourish because of water. History conveyed how ancient Egypt civilization grew along the banks of the river Nile. Trades and business flourished because of the presence of the most essential water. Men lived longer, conquered death, sickness and even war because of that simple hydrogen-oxygen molecular relationship. We are truly lucky to have nature made it around “renewable”. But what is it with water that makes it the most important resources of all? We live in a water planet, right?(71% of the Earth’s surface is water). Well if that’s the case then why worry? Oops,… but then we are also water beings (60% in most of our cells in the body is water) and that, in order for us to survive, we need to continually replenish them and so with our environment. If we have to deal with grim realities and statistical congruences, we may say that in the next two decades (with the course of global warming’s dictate over water cycle and growing wor...

As somebody new in handling Environmental Science for an International School, the fear of being tagged as inept on the subject pushed me to rummage for the ‘latest’ reference in our friendly librarian’s counter. In the pile of books where she led me, was a softbound one, atypically large for a College textbook, still tied in straw and obviously in the process of ordering approval. It was thick with gray pages in newsprint and with words “for sale in the Philippines only” adorning the cover with intention. Like a child eager to gobble its first Nursery book, I swooned over the pages quick when in minutes I realized that the dampness I felt in my palms was incomparable to the appalling revelation I have yet to LEARN. It was right at that instance that I have realized that we as accidental creatures of this Earth has treated it with so much indifference that we are starting to sense our karmic retributions. Earth is dying and it is dying fast. To reckon would be an easy thing to say. But...