You can’t fight nature without expecting it to fight back. This week, former US vice president Al Gore visited the Philippines and gave a talk on climate change.
According to him, over 13.5 million Filipinos will have to be relocated over time because of rising sea levels, which are bound to rise higher in the Philippines compared to the rest of the world due to global warming.
According to an estimate by the United Nations, there are 101 million people in the country.
Gore said:
The rate of sea level rise is projected to be two or three times faster in the Philippines. Why is that, you will ask. Because about half of the current sea level rise comes from the warming of the oceans.
It’s something called thermal expansion…when the oceans get warmer, the molecules spread out. And since they’re getting warmer faster around the Philippines than just about anywhere else on earth, the sea level is increasing faster here.
Global warming is a result of deforestation, increasing use of aerosols, and rising greenhouse gases.
Gore is active in climate change activism. In 2006, he wrote a book and starred in a documentary called An Inconvenient Truth, where he presented his famous slideshow to raise awareness of global warming and the environmental movement.
He also visited Tacloban in Leyte, a city ravaged by Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan), one of the strongest typhoons to hit the world.
What can we do to save the planet? Share your thoughts below!
