A 14yo thinks of solutions to climate crisis and other nature things
My brother took his mom out to dinner a couple of Saturdays ago so naturally his son Andres and I tagged along. Yeah, it’s a family dinner alright but Andres and I were having our own private discussion, where I was reminded again of how fascinating my nephew is.
The cool 14-year-old was telling me about how he wants to be, to his two-year-old cousin Sandro, what I was/am to him. I thought that was really sweet and nice of him to say. We spoke of songs and he couldn’t believe one of his favorites was a remake from my time. (No way, that’s old?!)
He also told me about the amphibian Axolotl that stays deep in the waters. Some of them would turn into a lizard, he said — like its gills would transform into lungs — and some won’t. Why and how it does, Andres doesn’t really know.
I thought he was pulling my leg but:
According to Scientific American, Axolotls are “are neotenic, meaning that the adults retain traits seen only in juveniles of similar species. Although other salamanders metamorphose into terrestrial creatures, axolotls hold on to their feathery gills and stay in the water for their entire lives. It’s as if they never grow up.”
The conversation led us to how creatures in the deep ocean are finding themselves on the surface and I mentioned to him something I learned from — was she an environment officer? — at a junket in Bacolod I attended years ago.
The lady told me how concerning it was that all these large animals were washing up ashore and too frequently, too. “They don’t belong to the surface,” she said. “What could be driving them there?”
She looked back to Yolanda/Haiyan and how for several days before the super typhoon hit, the waters drew back from the shore, as though being sucked back. The animals were a ball of nerves, the birds were howling. And then the typhoon struck.
She thinks it’s all connected. Large environmental events/catastrophes and unusual behaviors of animals. So animals washing up ashore, she thinks they might be feeling something unusual down there. Maybe they were feeling huge tremors down the sea forcing them away and into the shore.
And then she thought out loud: We could use the help of Indigenous Peoples because they would know how to decipher such primal communications. I know at some level it sounds baloney, but to be honest, I find it very wise.
I told Andres about the theory of tremors driving the animals out of the deep ocean where they usually dwell and added my own: Maybe it was also climate change. It’s beginning to go warm in the usually cold waters and they probably got lost looking for what they were used to.
Andres said it could also be all the trash that’s beginning to find its way to them. How horrible. We’ve totally desecrated Earth, our trash is beginning to infiltrate depths of ocean man hasn’t even seen yet. I mean seriously. We totally thrashed the planet up.
Trash must be festering in Andres’ mind because earlier in Palawan this year, he shared one of the solutions he’s thought of for Earth’s garbage problem: Why not blast it out into space?
I thought that was on another level, a larger, more dangerous version of pagkakalat. I tell him this but he countered: What if they aim the trash into the sun? That would burn it and solve the trash problem.
Andres has a point. If billionaires are able to, and have been blasting in and out of space, they might as well bring the trash their corporations have produced with them there. Make sense of that wasteful use of fuel.
But still, what of accountability? What of the huge scale of pagkakalat? What of nipping the problem in the bud and not actually causing any harm to the environment in the first place?
In Palawan, Andres said he liked finding things, like the unusual rocks he kept discovering on the shore and kept bringing back up to our deck. During low tide, we’d spend a good amount of time bent over, surveying the rocks and the shells and the mushrooms and sometimes, the crabs traversing the landscape.
He enjoyed it so much that back in school, he joined an ocean society that organizes coastal cleanups. So hecould do more of what he enjoys, he says: Find things. I love that the richness of nature isn’t lost on him.
It wasn’t always the case, though.
When he was around 8 or 9, he didn’t know how to react to being outdoors. He would utter the loudest yuck at seeing a bug. He associated being outside with being dirty and gross. Outside, he was always sweating.
But he surprised me in Florence, when happily he frolicked the garden of our bnb. He ran around even in the cold, even in the early morning, obviously enjoying himself. When I teased him about loving nature, he continued to uphold his dislike for it. I’m thinking maybe he thought he disliked nature because it was foreign to him?
Which leads me to wonder: When did it start happening, our disconnect from earth? When did dirt and soil become bad things? When did being outdoors become not good for you?
I don’t know when people started preferring the cold bite of airconditioning over the mellow forgiving breeze — maybe when people started not feeling the breeze because there were not enough trees around them?
Maybe, on the Philippine level, it was when our ancestors realized the sun was making us darker than we already were and so being under it probably isn’t a good idea because one! must! have! white! skin!
Shade was preferred and then later on, the cooler conditions provided by airconditioning and then why even expose yourself to the elements outdoors when being inside was safer and more hygienic?
When I was younger, we used to catch butterflies and suck on santan flowers and make bubbles off gumamela. I don’t know when we stopped and why.
I get it but I maybe I really don’t?
On the Philippine level: God just didn’t just bless us, he spoiled us rotten. He must absolutely love us to give us these islands and lagoons and beaches and sunsets and sunrises and the weather.
And what did we do? We cut down trees and bombed the seas out for food. We kept producing trash and left them everywhere, thinking somebody’s gonna clean after us. We threw beach parties that shocked and traumatized the ecosystem. We treated our rivers as a trash bin and felt no responsibility at cleaning it up.
I don’t know. Maybe I got lucky because I am able to see a lot of the Philippines. Maybe if more people saw and experienced the country, then the disconnect won’t be as serious? This makes me sad because this country is as much theirs as mine so why aren’t they able to experience as much of it, too?
To be fair, it’s not like I’ve seen that much.
One thing I’m pretty sure of though is that our leaders have seen and experienced more of the Philippines. Which makes me sadder and angrier because why aren’t doing enough to take care of it?
Which is also to say, why haven’ they been taking care of its people too, to ensure we all know of how rich we truly are?
I don’t know. Some days I really feel hopeless. Where did it all go wrong?
