Ningas Kugon

I am planning to investigate who planted the trees along one of the main road here in Pampanga so that I can write an article about him/her as a way of saying thank you for helping the environment. Due to busy schedules, a month passed by but I wasn’t able to check it out. Unfortunately during the lull I found out that it is only a one day project.

No one is watering the plant and they let the grass grow around the trees. So when there is a grassfire, the trees that were planted were also burned. The only remnants that I can see now is the dried trunk of the trees, there still some few trees that survived but I was wondering if the remaining trees can still survive the long drought. According to the government weather agency, there will be a long drought due to the El Nino phenomena.

It seems that this is another testament to ningas kugon attitude of most Filipinos. Ningas Kugon refers to the Filipino attitude of only good at first; they will start a project or work but will not finish it. This maybe the reason why after a known personality claimed that they planted trees, he/she will no longer update us on what happened to the trees that they planted. This also answer my question why after so many politician, government or non government organization claimed that they planted trees our forest still dwindling and trees in the countryside are decreasing. It is sad that the environment became an unhappy victim of the Filipino ningas kugon.

If we really want to resolve the problem with global warming our ningas kugon attitude should be removed and address proper urban and regional planning in our environmental endeavor until to the end. Until we have that attitude any good environment project that we will start will all be wasted.

An Unpopular Green Program

Our company is campaigning for a Green Program. The goal of this program is to save resources by switching off unused lights, be frugal in the use of tissue paper and by not leaving the faucet open.

As expected it was not accepted with open arms by some employees. They think that this is another way of the company to maximize their profit. And they feel that the company is just trying to penalize them. They didn't think that it would be better for the company to do this than to reduce their benefits. Any savings the company may get for this program might be used to increase our salary and benefits.

I am just wondering why there are people who cannot stop their wasteful habit and complete disregard of the environment. Do they not know what is good and what is right? I am saddened that they cannot accept the environment as a replacement for their miniscule sacrifice. An energy saving of 1 million kWh of electricity can avoid 800 tons of CO2 emissions and a savings of approximately 80,000 pesos.

Until there are people who cannot make a small sacrifice for the environment, politician wherein agenda for the environment is just being used to attract supporters and people that still believe that global warming is not for real, the threat of global warming is still far from over.