Grandkids’ grey hair

“What made us dream he would comb grey hair?”  Irish poet and 1923 Nobel Laureate William Butler Yeats wrote of a friend––and the “discourtesy of death.” A week after Tyhoon “Sendong” hit,  Mindanao  deaths  bolted  to 1,249.

When New Year dawns, other victims  won’t  “comb  grey hair.” Exhausted rescue workers  still  stumble across bodies in the muck and debris. “Even the (corpse) sniffing dogs are tired,” Regional Disaster Council chief Ana Caneda noted.

New Year’s Day  2012 finds more than 376,000 people displaced  by the storm and  floods. Almost 55,000 still huddle in crowded makeshift evacuation centers in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan, as government scrambles to build  homes. Potable water is in short supply.

No major disease outbreak at evacuation centers has occurred. Knock on  wood.  Credit the swift help by citizens, civic and church  groups, plus aid agencies.

A low pressure area, a cold front and rains, however, persisted. They unleashed mudslides, this time  across a wider  swath. Leyte, northern Negros Occidental, Capiz, to cities like  Bacolod and   Valencia in Bukidnon were hit.

Few heeded the first signals of climate change. World Meteorological Organization  notes 2001 through 2010 has been the “warmest decade.” Glaciers are melting and ever warmer sea levels are rising.

A month into the Aquino presidency, the Climate Change Congress of the Philippines,  led  by Archbishop Antonio Ledesma, warned about  impending weather threats, the Inquirer recalled. Ledesma  repeated the caution in a Malacañang antipoverty conference. Two  weeks later, “Sendong” struck, inflicting the worst damage in 12 years.

On New Year’s  Eve, the itch to peer ahead  reaches fever pitch. Many  leaders’  line of sight, however,  ends at  larger  Internal Revenue Allotment slabs ( a.k.a. pork barrel ) or 2013  elections. Discerning the future has never been one of man’s special strengths.

“Crystal-balling” is about making educated guesses of what lies beyond.  From today’s realities, one sifts trends likely to endure  and reshape tomorrow. “In today, tomorrow already walks.”

Leaf  through  the new Human Development Report  titled  “Sustainability and Equity.” The Philippines ranks 112  among 187 countries analyzed.  Aside from tools like gross national product, the indices  factor in life expectancy, health and education. This year,  HDR  uses those gauges  in the context of ecological stress.

“A 10 percent  increase in the number of people affected  by an extreme weather event reduces a country’s human development (ranking ) by two percent,” says this just published United Nations  Development  Programme study. Freedoms of people today must expand   “while making reasonable efforts to avoid compromising those of future generations.”

The average life  expectancy for a Filipino today is over 69 years, similar to an Iraqi.  There are stark differences in this “threshold at which all other hopes begin.”  Like Jamaicans, La Union residents have a life expectancy of 74 years. In contrast,  55  years for  Joloanos  resemble that  of Rwandans.

More comb grey hair in  Vietnam or  Sri Lanka.  Life expectancy there now  crests at  75. It is 81 for a  Singaporean and 83 for a Japanese. “That a man’s reach should exceed his grasp/ Or what’s a heaven for?”

Overall  adult literacy (95 percent )  smudges  “black holes” like  Maguindanao. Warlord rule  reduced  44 out of 100 residents into  “no-read-no-writes.” That’s the highest functional illiteracy rate for 77 provinces, notes the Philippine Human Development Report. In Laguna, seven  are illiterates.

Chronic hunger here stunts 34 out of every 100  kids under 5. That’s on par with Equatorial Guinea.  Maternal death rates are on a level with Paraguay  at  94 out of every 1,000. Only  62 out  of every 100 Filipina mothers had skilled medical personnel in attendance at birth––the level  in Guatemala.

HDR links traditional gauges with well-being  or insecurity from   environmental impact.    The Philippines has a only  a  fifth of Malaysia ’s renewable  water  resources. Yet, we pump 17 percent  of that, like Mexico. Shrinkage in forests is a staggering 25 percent. Illegally cut logs thus crushed many Mindanao victims.

“For a healthy, well functioning environment … enabling institutions are needed, including a fair and independent judiciary and the right to information,” the UN says. (Unlike the Corona Supreme Court  or  Aquino’s gutting of  the Freedom of  Information bill?)

“For ordinary folk, the ultimate new year question is simpler,”  a Cebu newspaper  said. “Will life become better for us? Will more of us live to comb grey hair?” These require a U-turn from  Macapagal-Arroyo  policies.

A  subservient Ombudsman, meanwhile,  has been replaced by  the towering  former Justice  Conchita Carpio Morales. Former President  Arroyo  is under  hospital arrest. In the New Year, the anti-graft court will raffle three giants sleaze cases filed by the Ombudsman against GMA,  former First Gentleman and other officials for the botched National Broadband Network (NBN) deal with Chinese telecommunications firm, ZTE Corp. The impeachment trial  against  Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona begins.

The end of  2011 survey by the  Social Weather Stations found that  President  Aquino  continues to enjoy backing across all  socio-economic classes. He  reaped “very good” net satisfaction score of +58, or 71 percent satisfied. There  were  13 percent dissatisfied.

That provides a  start, so our grandkids may comb grey hair. “For last year’s words belong to last year’s language./  And next year’s words await another’s voice./  And to make an end is to make a beginning,” T.S. Eliot said.