“The Thinking Heads” – Are They Thinking Of Climate Change? Nah! Greta Thunberg Is

A Filipino, I know for a fact that within the University of the Philippines (UP) System composed of 8 component universities – UP Baguio, UP Cebu, UP Diliman, UP Los Baños, UP Manila, UP Visayas, UP Mindanao, and UP Open University – as a UPLB alumnus, I see, “It is as if they have turned their backs on the realities of the present. None of their heads are talking Climate Change! They’re living on a different planet. I see, all their thinking is academic!”

(“Under Her Eye” from medium.com, “Oblation” from 123rf.com)

I'm talking about Climate Change in general, but as a graduate of UP Los Baños, I will focus on Agriculture. More so because globally, agriculture is a big contributor to the climate crisis, contributing 21-37% of annual greenhouse gas emissions (Frontiers, frontiersin.org).

Now then, I will quote from Greta Thunberg, the Wonderkid of Climate Change – she is autistic, but people celebrate her because she is cerebral. She says in an old but not dated pronouncement (01 Nov 2018, “Greta Thunberg: The Rebellion Has Begun,” We Don’t Have Time, medium.com):

I think in many ways that we autistic are the normal ones and the rest of the people are pretty strange. They keep saying that climate change is an existential threat and the most important issue of all. And yet they just carry on like before. If the emissions have to stop, then we must stop the emissions. To me, that is black or white. There are no grey areas when it comes to survival. Either we go on as a civilization or we don’t. We have to change.

Yes Mam!

Ms Greta is saying it seems the autistics are the ones normal, and the rest of us are abnormal.

We normal people are saying Climate Change is “an existential threat and the most important issue of all” – and yet we behave as if we’ve all been here before and we survived!

“If the emissions have to stop then we must stop the emissions.” But the member heads of United Nations have been talking about stopping in the last 30 years from the adoption of the “UN Framework Convention on Climate Change” since 1992. Nothing doing!

Why?

Ms Greta says: “People keep doing what they do because the vast majority [don’t] have a clue about the consequences of our everyday life. And they don’t know the rapid changes required.”

Ms Greta, I know the rapid changes required that are within our reach in my country the Philippines, and they all belong to Agriculture, the #1 industry in these islands. That is why I have been writing about Organic Agriculture since at least 2011 (see my 20 July 2011 essay, “Crop Science Philippines. How Organic-Minded Are We?” A Magazine Called Love, blogspot.com). Simple: Organic agriculture does not produce greenhouse gases!

And that is why, as an alumnus of UP, I want the next President could be a Climate Activist grounded in agriculture – thus, I see ex-UPLB Chancellor Fernando C Sanchez as the best UP President! @517