Mandatory Implementation Of Alternative Fuels Will Gradually Reverse Climate Change

Feb. 24,2010
Mandatory Implementation Of Alternative Fuels Will Gradually Reverse Climate Change
By Quirico M. Gorpido, Jr
The unabated rising prices of crude oil and other petroleum products in the international market is now unbearable to the millions of Filipinos, rich and poor. Its influential power of creating a chain reaction of prices in all prime commodities and manufactured goods in the market and stores are irresistible to businessmen who do not want to be left behind by their counterparts in business and escalate as well the prices of all their products. With the spiraling increase in prices of all kinds of consumable goods, the poor and the rich alike are feeling the bitterness of coping with their daily needs. Those who have very low income Filipinos have forced themselves to refrain from buying other household needs, which decades ago were also affordable to them. They reduced their consumption of some goods so that they can still buy something they need for the next two or three days. That’s why the entire Filipinos are suffering because of our overdependence on gasoline and crude oil. The Philippine government is spending millions and millions of pesos yearly on gasoline and other oil products for vehicles and factories.
Because of our current hardships and economic miseries our government must not remain callous and insensitive to act. Members of both the Lower and the Upper House must muster their political will to hasten the approval of a House Bill aim at making mandatory for all operators and drivers nationwide to use the Compressed Natural Gas(CNG)to run the vehicles and factories. The aforesaid HB was co-authored by House energy committee chairman Mikey Arroyo of Pampanga and Parañaque City Representative Eduardo Zialcita. With the immediate implementation of this economic measure, our country can do away with being overdependence on imported fossil fuels, which greatly contribute to the heavy pollution in our big cities and the environment. When this goal would be realized, the Philippines can have a huge reduction on fuel expenditures and its unabated heavy pollution in big metropolis where all types of utilities and factories abound would be greatly reduced.
Since we have no vehicles and cars suitable for the utilization of Compressed Natural Gas, big financing institutions should come to rescue and help the government to buy the needed vehicles in places like the USA,Canada,India,China and in other countries where vehicles design for compressed natural gas fuel are being manufactured. The Malampaya-Palawan oil and gas fields in the country must be mined now and tap other potential oil and gas fields in various places of our nation to sustain our fuel needs. On the other hand, our big capitalists who choose to be consignees in this kind of business should not be tempted in the near future to mix compressed natural gas with crude oil like we have in all gasoline stations throughout the country, called kerosene by other name.
The mixture of two elements, we’ve just mentioned, like we are buying at gas station, especially if there is a blackout, will surely result to additional pollution in all our areas. The additional pollution due to crude oil mixture with the natural gas is very evident by the soots gathered inside our noses the night before when we resort to kerosene use as temporary substitute for the absence of electric power. Have you not observe that in your home, especially in the households of poor Filipinos? In contrast, unadulterated natural gas, if there’s a detection of any soot, is so insignificantly negligible to consider as pollution. Some of emission of kerosene (a mixture of natural gas and crude oil) put inside the lamps would also pollute our rooms the following day, if you have observed that as well. This means that if in the near future some tricky and hoarding businessmen would be tempted to do this deplorable thing, the pollution in our environment would re-emerged. Hence, there’s an urgent necessity to screen the attitude of businessmen/capitalists who would like to participate in the Government’s venture in this kind of undertaking where the issue on environment-friendly fuel is at stake.
Considering this probable prediction of the money-oriented rather than service-oriented attitude of some businessmen to rake huge profit in the name of mixture elements, the House Bill must include as one of its provisions prohibiting any capitalist/consignee to mix CNG with crude oil. A monitoring task force must be created that would include as members the Energy Committee Chairman, energy official and some honest and prudent NGO environmentalists for the purpose of monitoring and regular checking of CNG’s natural content before dispensing the fuel for private and public use. Those businessmen who would violate the law must be slapped with huge fine and imprisonment. We seriously need honest and prudent investors/capitalists in the strict application of such law in order to achieve our goal to greatly reduced our environmental pollution which make adults and children in this country suffer from illness and eventual death to countless of lives. According to reports pollution also causes chronic coughing in millions of children across the globe.
Other alternative fuel or energy that has been tapped to provide electricity and run vehicles is the solar energy. It has already been experimented and found to be feasibly usable and suitably applicable in running vehicles and providing electricity in numerous households in the country. It’s a free source of limitless energy and is non-pollutant: one of the greatest gifts from Mother Nature that remain untapped for centuries by man. The emergence of Great Minds in the field of Science and Technology are responsible for a huge leap in inventions and discoveries that have provided man his amenities including some of his needs in life more obtainable than before. We can also use electricity to run jeepneys and buses, which is also pollution-free. Makati’s current use of electric jeepneys plying in various areas of the city, which is much lesser in fuel expenses for the drivers and operators compared to gasoline and crude oil, is very encouraging and worthy of emulation for other cities and provinces. The experiments that our scientists, technical men and the experts have been doing are enough proof that the Philippine Government has the capability and the capacity to relentlessly pursue on these projects. A huge budget proportionate enough for its continual implementation must be made now for its effective realization.
The two alternative sources of fuel and energy that we are discussing are sure ways that will eventually release us from our overdependence on gasoline and crude oil which is now very prohibitive to obtain.
Global warming (the root cause of climate change) caused by unregulated heavy environmental pollution, which also damaged the ozone layer according to the scientists, is not only a Philippine concern and problem. It is also a concern and a problem of every country, every nation throughout the world, whether the industrialized or the developing because we breathe the same air and we live in the same planet. Therefore, it is of urgent necessity that all the nations and other countries of the world, including the United States of America, China, England, Australia, India, Russia, Japan, European countries, UK and Germany should also shift to alternative fuel like Compressed Natural Gas, solar energy to run their vehicles, cars and factories, biofuel or biomass, deuterium in order to achieve the highest degree of pollution reduction in our Planet Earth.
To those countries whose climate condition is similar to the Philippines, Nobel Prize winner Dr. Hartmut Michel during his recent visit to Manila has also advised its respective governments to tap wind power and hydro power that are environment-friendly to generate electricity

Series Of Rollback
Although nowadays the prices of crude oil and gasoline have greatly reduced after a series of rollback, but this ups and downs in pricing activities of the fossil fuels cannot be relied upon by the users and consumers. These kind of dirty fuels have no permanently sustainable pricing movement. It is dependently influence by the law of supply and demand in the international market. The preoccupation of self-interest capitalists/investors who mostly want to rake huge profit in this kind of business undertaking is also something to be considered as contributory factor in the unpredictable and volatile pricing scheme hike.
Hence, our businessmen and the government must not be callously complacent if there are days when crude oil, gasoline and other oil products will have decreased prices. The government must start implementing now the laws on Biofuel act of 2006 and the Renewable Energy Act of 2008 to tap and develop nature’s renewable energy resources that are readily available in our very own environment and are ecology-friendly.
The plan of the government to recommission or revive the 30-year-old Bataan Nuclear Power Plant must be debunked. It was found out by a team of Scientists and Engineers that it has numerous defects in its construction, among other defects, which pose as health hazard detrimental and harmful to the health and welfare of the people and equally destructive to the immediate environment.
Our high government officials, like Congressmen ,Senators,Scientists,Engineers,Technical men,The Experts, Educators and other concerned leaders should take heed seriously to what UP Professor Roland G. Simbulan was saying in his commentary article entitled “Is The BNPP Safe?”(PDI, Feb. 5, 2009 issue)
And that of Rina Jimenez-David’s “Anti-Nuclear and Pro-Life” (PDI, Feb. 24, 2009 issue) on the danger of reopening the defective BNPP as energy source. Who has initiated this plan? Why do we have to disrupt our thinking with such kind of energy which produces radioactive wastes harmful to humanity and our already heavily polluted environment? Another kind of potential and unprecedented radioactive disaster will only add to the worsening of our already worst environmental condition.
Common sense of wisdom and political will, unblemished with a sinister and wily scheme of acquiring more wealth thru greediness and self-centeredness, are the only 2 important things that our leaders really need to push thru in the realization, acquisition and the sustainable utilization of nature’s renewable energy resources that abound and are readily available in our environment. Like solar energy, hydropower (waterfalls), wind energy, biofuel from jatropha oil, coconut oil, corn, ethanol from sugar cane, biomass and reportedly a vast limitless deposits of deuterium lying in hibernation under the Surigao Deep also known as the Philippine Deep is waiting to be tapped.( Quirico M. Gorpido,Jr.)