by Emily Comedis

Created on: November 11, 2008

When population growth, poverty and environmental degradation are all rolling within a crystal ball, each one reflects the others. However, the seer of this crystal ball often fails to see himself within the crystal ball.

These realities, when inside the crystal ball are magnified, but when taken out; their size is ten times smaller than what we thought. What does this mean? It means that these realities do not necessarily need only gargantuan ideas,enormous money, or gigantic people, etc, to be tackled. It means that we, as individual, no matter who we are, by the small efforts we do every day, can make these realities smaller, just put them out of the crystal ball.

How shall we do that? Let us begin with population growth. In Philippines for instance, where I am a citizen, people debate a lot about the legal and ethical issues surrounding population explosion and population control. By visiting the slum corners of Philippines, you will witness millions of housewives seeking help how they can stop their family size from growing so fast. However, these housewives are all forgotten in the debates.

Population has been growing obese not because it is grounded on morality but because morality seems to start only between some times. Unfortunately, many married men, aside from their legal families, are keeping another, or two more families, with more than one child, not excluding some preachers. Some young girls, would later confess that they are already pregnant, and most of them, it is not their first time. Should it not be that morality starts at one side of the rope and ends on the other side of the rope?

What about poverty? Everyone dreads poverty. That is a reality. But only few want to confront poverty. In Philippines, everything seems to be due to poverty. And people say poverty in Philippines is due to corruption, and this is true. The chick-egg debates never ends then. But despite the poor governance, some Filipinos are wise and ask themselves: "How much money do I have?" And they make that money sufficient for their needs. They do not create needs until they have enough money. This saves them from debts.

Finally, the emerging giant concern is environmental degradation. Actually we do not need to be environmentalist to be able to capsulate this problem. As long as we segregate and throw our garbage properly; Turn off unused light or air condition; repair linking faucets; or ride the train once in a while. This is already a big contribution to regenerate the environment. These are the least thing we can do.

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