Warming up for Food

essay : A Filipino friend of mine went to Germany recently, and bumped into a German acquaintance. The German said, “What are you doing here? It’s so cold here.”

While facts could be cited against global warming, it can also be said that to a certain extent, our opinion is generally wrest on how we perceived these facts. A citizen of a temperate country will welcome the summer, while a Filipino, from a tropical Philippines, will always consider it a bane that summers in our country had become hotter.

Early in the summer this year 2010, we experienced the high temperature recorded, and the record only topped immediately by the temperature of the days after. News agencies reported that April 6th was the hottest day in the year scorching at 36.1 degree Celsius, only to be topped by the 11th. By the end of the summer, May 19th declared the hottest day of the year in 37.5 degree Celsius. The Philippine weather agency PAG-ASA had declared that this had been the hottest summer in ten years averaging 36 degree Celsius every day. With these facts in mind, if a Filipino is asked if “global warming is preferable to global cooling”, then he certainly would say, “No.” I, a Filipino, at first, would intuitively answer “No, the world is hot as it is.” No matter, the world is getting warmer.

Niall Ferguson, a respected historian from the Harvard University, pointed out that food production had benefited from a slightly increased temperature since the 18th century during the Industrial Revolution, to which many had attributed wrongly the start of global warming. The truth is: the world had been increasingly warm since the Ice Age. What is problematic is the cataclysmic effect of human activity to the rate that Earth is warming up.

Between global warming and global cooling, which is preferable? I like to factor in food production in my answer. A drop in temperature usually means damage to crops. Locally, Baguio farmers suffers when their crops freezes from lowered temperature. Imagine the Ice Age once again. The land is frozen. Nothing can be cultivated, hence food is scarce. Not only are you cold, you are also hungry. I prefer global warming, if I have to chose, but please, the world is hot as it is.

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