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BLOG ACTION DAY – OCTOBER 15 – ONE ISSUE – ONE DAY- THOUSANDS OF VOICES

cartoon & content Copyright Jean Burman 2007

Today is Blog Action Day. It’s a day when bloggers worldwide UNITE to discuss the same issue on the same day (in their own way) to bring awareness to an issue of global importance. The issue chosen this time around… (a decidedly “hot” topic at the moment)… is The Environment.

But just as I was climbing up onto my soapbox for one more round… (groan… I know I know… not again!) the thought occurred to me that the majority of bloggers may take this opportunity to jump upon the “gloomy and equally doomy” global warming bandwagon. So in deference to the universal laws of attraction… I thought it may be less dangerous and ultimately more constructive to focus on the “positive” and decided to run with a funny little story that really did happen… (just a few years ago)

This story became the stuff of legend in our family… growing bigger and better by the year. It was the day when mum let rip and stepped out from the kerb… in one small step for the family and one giant leap for mankind! LOL

A bit of background.

The year was 1997. We had been in the Philippines for just over a week staying at the relatively posh Peninsula Hotel in Makati (the business district of Manila). Over the course of our stay the Hotel had become a safe haven for us as we travelled about the city… a place to retreat back to and literally “catch our breath”… when we could take no more of the bustle, the traffic, the heat, the glare, the constant crush, the confusion, the squalid atmosphere, and the acrid air!

As Aussies… used to living in a comparatively uncluttered unpolluted and unspoiled country… the Philippines (and Manila in particular) had come as quite a shock to the senses. Most startling for us was the great divide between the haves and the have nots… and the contrast as opulent excess rubbed shoulders with abject poverty.

But more than that… there was the pollution… not “rubbish on the streets” kind of pollution… (in fact even the slums had some semblance of order) but the staggering level of industrial pollution. It was high Summer… excessively hot and sultry… and the air was virtually “unbreathable “out on the street. The wide dual lane carriageway outside the Hotel was divided by a grassy median strip lined with drooping date palms their trunks caked black with carbon. I marvelled at their tenacity!

Fortunately… we were driven most places in an air conditioned van. Fortunate I say… for two reasons

1. Because to walk out onto the streets and breathe the air even for the shortest time… would have afforded a lifetime exposure to toxic levels of carbon monoxide and any number of other noxious chemical emissions.

2. And because as a foreign driver you’d never survive the drive… as roads marked for two or maybe three lanes bulged at the seams with cars, trucks, buses and jeepneys “jammed in” six across… and vying for pole position. (To tell you the truth… the only “pole” position I saw… was when a bus in central downtown Makati rounded the corner on the inside lane and was shunted up onto the footpath and impaled against one!) But I digress…(grin)

The Story.

The day began like any other. Nose pressed up to the glass I looked out the hotel window down to the street and watched as cars on the early morning business commute banked up on the street out side. We were without a car for the day as DH had meetings out of the city and the car had been dispatched for this purpose. So the kids and I looked at each other and reviewed our options. A dip in the pool was ruled out as it was on ground level and as we already knew… the air down there was impossible to breathe… so the decision was taken to spend the morning investigating the brand new air conditioned shopping mall right across the road from the Hotel.

The next decision was how to get there. This would be a no-brainer anywhere else… but here… it was something I really had to think about.

‘Should we get a cab… (to-go-across-the-road?)… or should we run the gauntlet and see if we can make it across on foot?’

Common sense (and social conscience) prevailed as I set off trailing three little kids behind… down the elevator… around through the back of the hotel and out onto the street. I had instructed them before we opened the back door that if the fumes were too strong and we had to wait too long to cross… I would give the nod and we would run back inside. (Bizarre isn’t it? Well it was to me… where I came from clean breathable air was a given!)

The crowd at the pedestrian crossing quickly swelled as we waited patiently to cross. The air was thick and hot and the fumes were choking. We waited a few minutes and then with eyes burning and struggling for breath… we edged our way further into the crowd and a little closer to the kerb. The three lanes of traffic (now blown out to five) flowed belligerently past with not the slightest intention to stop. I looked around and realised that by now we were too deep into the crowd to beat a hasty retreat… and there in front of us… the slow surge of traffic (matched only by the slow surge of anger rising inside me) showed no sign of abating. Why wouldn’t they stop? This was a pedestrian crossing afterall… and we were dying out here! It was crunch time!

I have always found anger to be the best motivator… especially when it comes to anything to do with my kids! And so it was… that I became the unwitting hero that day… as I turned and instructed the kids to wait. Stepping determinedly (and perhaps more than a little bit stupidly) off the kerb and out into the traffic… I raised my hand defiantly and with a mixture of great authority and self righteous indignation singlehandedly stopped the traffic. I’m still not sure to this day who got the biggest fright… me… the kids… or the cars buses and trucks across five lanes of traffic… who after screeching to an extremely reluctant halt… then sat on their horns blasting us as the crowd surged triumphantly across the street to join me.

Afterward in the wash-up of excited conversation with their father… we all agreed it was a small (but necessary) victory. In the case for man (or in this case “woman”) against machine… woman had won out… and saved the eyesight and lungs of at least a few dozen people that day… including her own three small children. *wink*

Long story short… Manila was one of the most polluted cities I had ever visited. Granted… it was summer… and the heat inversion was something else… but the sight of the leaden grey sea and sky across Manila Bay (in particular) and breathing air that burns the eyes and skin on contact… struck fear in my heart that every city in the world could become like this one if nothing were done to reduce the levels of pollution that man emits into it’s atmosphere. Life would not be worth living without fresh air to breathe and it’s not until we are deprived of it that we realise how precious a resource it really is. But by then it will be almost too late…

Personally… I think that the focus of our efforts should be on reducing emissions (for the right reasons) rather than arguing the political toss over the existence or otherwise of global warming and climate change… and the impact of the human footprint. To me… that’s just wasting time. We know we are polluting the earth… and what better motivator could there be to clean up our act and reduce our emissions… than to no longer have fresh air to breathe?

Asphyxia (and a whole host of modern day illnesses caused by our toxic environment – including cancer) sure beats the heck out of rising sea levels… and heat exhaustion… as a terrible way to die!

Comments always welcome…

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