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LINK: ‘Note Verbale‘, Manila Times (Sunday-Career Section) – 18 May 2008 Issue  

With fossil fuel getting scrimpy and prices of crude oil trading beyond $120 per barrel, governments have been pushing to replace a part of the current fuel mix with biofuels, essentially with ethanol and biodiesel, as an alternative.

Biofuel is any fuel derived from organic matter, most commonly from photosynthetic plants that capture solar energy. Unlike fossil fuel, which is derived from dead biological materials of long ago, or nuclear fuels, biofuel is renewable.

The process of creating biofuel as liquid fuel for transportation involves growing crops such as sugar and corn and using yeast fermentation to produce ethanol, or growing plants that naturally produce oil such as jathropa, palm or soybean which when processed chemically creates biodiesel.

Biofuels are regarded by many experts as environment friendly, a more affordable energy source and economically sustaining particularly to farmers.

The Philippines is among the many countries in the world that support and promote biofuels as an alternative source of energy. It is for this reason that the Biofuels Law was fast-tracked on May 6 a year ago.

They say the Philippines was the first country to legislate on the use of biofuel blends within its borders with the enactment of the Biofuels Law (Republic Act No. 9367). The law mandates all liquid fuels for motors and engines sold in the country should contain locally sourced biofuel components in order to reduce reliance from imported oil by providing certain incentives and punishments.

To avoid a potential clash with the issue affecting food security, the Department of Agriculture said that biodiesel would be produced from coconut, which is neither a food staple nor a major ingredient for animal feeds while bioethanol will not be sourced from sugar cane supplies destined for food and beverage application.

Right after Labor Day, BBC News reported that Belgian international law professor and special rapporteur on the right to food of the United Nations, Olivier de Schutter, urged a freeze on biofuel investment calling the blind pursuit of the policy as “irresponsible.” He said that the program drives food prices higher, threatening 100 million of the world’s poorest. His predecessor, Jean Ziegler, had condemned biofuels as a “crime against humanity” and called for an immediate ban on their use.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Rajendra Pachauri, a climate change scientist, cautioned the world in developing biofuels because of its perverse effects on the environment and higher food prices. Some environmentalists also blame biofuel programs for distorted government budgets and much of the deforestation in Southeast Asia and Brazil. Some scientists also claim that some types of biofuel generate as much carbon dioxide as the fossil fuels they replace.

In his article for Time magazine entitled: “The Clean Energy Scam,” Michael Grunwald reported that “new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it’s dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous . . . Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves.”

With the unabated price of fossil fuel in the international market, there is definitely a need to shift to alternative sources of energy. The world obviously needs oil as much as it needs food and needs to protect the environment.

It cannot be said that the use of biofuels is all that good. But it cannot be said also that it is all that bad. Whether it would bear either pernicious or beneficial consequences would heavily depend on how the political management of every nation could strike the balance in terms of state policies.

Like money, biofuels need not be the source of all evil.

LINK: ‘Note Verbale‘, Manila Times (Sunday-Career Section) - 11 November 2007 Issue

In 1757, they say that Russian scientist Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov is the first to introduce the “biogenic theory”, which holds that fossil or mineral fuels come from fossilized remains of dead plants and animals which through compression, heating and breakdown of bacteria over a long period of geological time produce crude oil and natural gas. 

They say that at least 86 percent of human-produced energy comes from burning fossil fuels, which unfortunately are non-renewable because it takes millions of years to form them and the global reserves are being consumed much faster than the reserves that Mother Nature are supposed to create.

This week prices of oil escalated to as high as above $98 per barrel raising serious concerns about its impact to problematic economies especially in countries like the Philippines which is highly dependent on imported fuel.

Experts say that this record high increases in oil prices are largely attributable to the peaking global demand and the concomitant permanent decline in production of oil-producing nations, not to mention the depreciating value of the US dollar, the continuing American occupation of Iraq that holds the third largest oil reserves in the world, the political tensions in the Middle East, and the approaching winter in the Northern Hemisphere.
 
It is uncertain whether the trend would remain over time or simply a temporary condition.

This twin global malady of oil supply scarcity and price surge would certainly impose a deeper travail of difficulty in the economic life of the Filipino people. It is not as if these concerns are recent.

For more than three decades, each and every political regime of this country has been talking about plans to develop and promote alternative energy sources ranging from nuclear power, geothermal and renewable energy sources, and more recently, bio-fuel.

The last thirty years would have been enough to address the country’s energy supply chain. But the Bataan nuclear power plant is mothballed. Nothing substantial was heard after President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo inaugurated the “Malampaya Deep Water Gas-to-Power Project” in October 2001. It is hoped that the 2006 Biofuels Act would not suffer the same fate of apparent oblivion.

The good news, government says, is that the peso exchange rate is getting stronger vis-à-vis the US dollars. But the impact of this improving peso is hardly felt, or maybe would never be felt, by Juan de la Cruz given the adverse economic effects of higher energy and power costs.

The average peso-dollar exchange rate for October 2007 is P44.380 to a US dollar, or approximately 21 percent decline from the highest posted in October 2004 at P56.341. On the other hand, the $98 per barrel just right after the close of last month represents an increase of approximately 77 percent compared to the October 2004 international market price of $55.15 per barrel.

Given these figures that portray the current rate of depreciation of global oil price increase still carrying a net impact of 56 percent as against peso exchange rate appreciation, it would be mathematically difficult for the government to rest on its laurels on the improving exchange rate to resolve the country’s worsening economic condition. Noteworthy of consideration in the equation is the fact that the exchange earnings of overseas workers, which have been fueling consumption spending and keeping the country’s economy afloat for decades, are also depreciating.

As Tom Kloza of the Oil Price Information Service told “The Early Show” of CBS, “I don’t think it’s a question of whether we hit $100. It’s a question of how much time we might spend there”.

There is certainly a good sense to address the oil price issue but there is more urgency for a committed effort and leadership to tackle the country’s energy supply chain.

Some political observers note that the country may not see the day when corruption and poverty is finally over because they are the same perennial problems that drive unscrupulous politicians to remain in power.

Similarly, the country’s energy woes have been recurrent, hopefully, not for the same reason.

LINK: ‘Note Verbale‘, Manila Times (Sunday-Career Section) – 5 August 2007 Issue

Italian genius Leonardo da Vinci once said that “water is the driving force of all nature”. 

This chemical substance scientifically consisting of two hydrogen atoms covalently bonded to a single atom of oxygen is critical to the existence and for the proliferation of life. 71 percent of the earth’s surface is water.  At least two-thirds of the human body is composed of water.

Evidences of human civilization began and flourished in places where water is abundant. Ancient Egypt has the Nile River.  The great Mesopotamia (now a region of Iraq) had the rivers of Tigris and the Euphrates. It is not a source of wonder why at least two and a half billion people of six nations, including the two most populous China and India, settled and live in the major river systems of the mountain range of the Himalayas. The existence of, and access to, bodies of water also contributed much to the success of prosperous cities like London, New York City, Chicago, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore. With only one percent of world’s supply of available fresh water, Middle East countries consider water as a vital resource.

Earth’s water supply is definitely sufficient to sustain human life and other life forms. The balance of water is constant and the water cycle has no beginning and no end for as long as this planet exists in the universe. Water therefore is not a scarce resource but a strategic one. Since water can assume different states (solid, liquid or gas) and could be rendered inutile by contamination, the availability of water needed, and the quality of water fit, for human and life consumption is threatened and results to its scarcity. And this has become a major global concern.

The 2006 Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) shares the same point of view. The report rejects the argument that the global water crisis is brought about by the lack of physical supply. It argues that the crisis is attributable “to poverty, inequality and unequal power relationships, as well as flawed water management policies that exacerbate scarcity”. It is for these reasons that in this era of supposed global prosperity, more than a billion people are denied the right to clean water. At least 2.6 billion people are denied access to adequate sanitation. Every year some 1.8 million children die as a result of diseases caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation thereby making unclean water the world’s second biggest killer of children at the start of the 21st century.

With the ‘below-than-normal’ rainfall over a couple of months, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo recently warned the public to prepare for a possible drought that could eventually result in a water and power shortage. And this has a chilling effect on the Filipino people particularly on the economy, food security, health and sanitation.

Of course, the changing weather or climatic pattern brought about by global warming is the easy culprit for this malady. But the month of August, they say, also produces the most amount of rainfall in this country compared with the other months of the year. Thus, it could be so that by the end of this month, or in the months that would follow, the problem government is facing is no longer about drought but of floods and water-related disasters. Again, blame it to global warming.

Unfortunately, the government and its constituents always seem to take a reactive stance to a nagging problem. No wonder, the fact that the Philippines is an archipelago surrounded by great bodies of water and waterways has not made it until today as one of the most progressive countries in the world.

Water sustains life and a sound proactive management and sustainable use of water resources also makes it a strategic tool for progress.

But more importantly as the UNDP report said: “The unifying principle for public action in water and sanitation is the recognition that water is a basic human right.” And it is part of the government’s social contract to promote, enhance and protect this right.

PUBLISHED: ‘Note Verbale‘, Manila Times (Sunday-Career Section) - 3 December 2006 Issue

Global warming, or the increasing average temperature of the earth’s atmosphere and ocean, is a major concern of the human race in recent years. 

In 1824, Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier, a French mathematician and physicist, first discovered what is now called as the ‘greenhouse effect’, or the process in which heat absorbed by the atmosphere warms the planet.

Greenhouse effect is natural when the greenhouse gases results from solar activity and the internal processes of Mother Nature. It is anthropogenic when the greenhouse gases are emitted as a consequence of human activities. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons, and water vapor, among others. Burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, the use of chlorofluorocarbons in refrigeration and manufacturing are some human interventions that cause anthropogenic greenhouse effect.

They say that without the greenhouse gases, earth’s temperature would be an estimated 30 degrees Celcius lower and the world would be uninhabitable. But experts concede that adding more carbon dioxide or methane in the atmosphere, with no other changes, will make the earth’s surface warmer.

No less that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) declared that: “There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.”

In fact, the world experienced the warmest temperature in the years 1998 and 2005 since the use of instrumental measurements in the 1800s, according to estimates of institutions like WMO.

Experts warn that global warming has deleterious effects not only in the environment and the ecosystem but also poses a threat to human life. Among these effects include the depletion of the ozone layer, extreme weather events, some species being forced to extinction, glacier retreat, a rise in sea levels that could be damaging to trade and centers of population, and disastrous natural calamities.

In December 1997, a treaty popularly known as the ‘Kyoto Protocol’ was negotiated in Japan under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Countries that ratify this protocol commit to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases, or engage in emissions trading if they maintain or increase emissions of these gases. The agreement came into effect on February 16, 2005.  The Philippines ratified the treaty on November 20, 2003.

The United States and Australia are opposed to the treaty. Critics say that the protocol is a global socialism initiative to stifle the growth of industrial economies and effect a transfer of wealth to the third world economies.

But for former US Vice-President Albert Arnold Gore Jr. global warming is a grave concern. He does not only preach and actively participate in events on global warming awareness but also puts his advocacies into practice. For instance, he and his family drive hybrid vehicles and buys carbon offset every time he travels by plane.

Al Gore’s initiatives inspired the book and the record-breaking film documentary entitled: “An Inconvenient Truth”. In a media reaction to the film, incumbent US President George W. Bush said, “We need to set aside whether or not greenhouse gases have been caused by mankind or because of natural effects.”

Whether the concern about global warming is speculative or factual is immaterial. It is better to be pro-active than be reactive in treating Mother Earth.

Surely, efforts to reduce global warming have political, economic and social costs. But people should realize that when nature strikes back all these are irrelevant. 

Then, it may be too late to learn that the truth is not only inconvenient – it really hurts.