[Anthropocene /ˈanθrəpəˌsiːn/ noun: the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.]

Suddenly everything has changed. It is as if humankind has been. shocked out of the complacency of assuming tomorrow will be like yesterday and that our actions have no consequences on the environment. To prevent the deaths of thousands of people, we’ve changed the way we live itself, denying our social and commercial activities, neglecting our livelihoods and isolating ourselves. Scientists are saying that the shock of this pandemic is a symptom of this epoch known as the anthropocene during which human activity has had a significant impact on geology and ecosystems. including climate change. More and worse, they say, is to come.

“We cut the trees; we kill the animals or cage them and send them to markets. We disrupt ecosystems, and we shake viruses loose from their natural hosts. When that happens, they need a new host. Often, we are it,” David Quammen, author of Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Pandemic’, was recently quoted as saying in the New York Times. Increasingly, scientists are finding that viruses which jump the species barrier from wild animals to humans are linked to environmental change and human behaviour; they do not respect species boundaries. It is thought this is what caused the first cases of SARS-CoV-2 which causes COVID-19. SARS-CoV, the virus which caused the SARS outbreak in 2003, jumped from an animal reservoir (civet cats, a farmed wild animal) to humans and then spread between humans. In a similar way, it is thought that SARS-CoV-2 jumped the species barrier and initially infected humans, but more likely through an intermediate host, that is another animal species more likely to be handled by humans – this could be a domestic animal, a wild animal, or a domesticated wild animal and, as of yet, has not been identified. The World Health Organisation points out on its website that until the source of this virus is identified and controlled, there is a risk of reintroduction of the virus in the human population and the risk of new outbreaks like the ones we are currently experiencing.

Nature poses threats, but it’s human activities that do the real damage. “The health risks in a natural environment can be made much worse when we interfere with it,” says Richard Ostfeld, a senior scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York.

Like the coronavirus pandemic, the climate emergency requires humans to completely change the way we live, if we are to mitigate. and adapt to its effects of the rising sea-level, more frequent and more intense natural disasters.

I have seen glimpses of this future before this pandemic as a journalist in Leyte in November 2002. A helicopter from Tacloban to Cebu revealed the terrible destruction of the island from Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan): not a single coconut tree of the many thousands that had covered the island was left standing. In the days before I’d seen how centuries of communities living and working together in Tacloban and Palo had been wiped out. A body was laid out at a bus stop, covered only with a dirty cloth. Rubble, sticks and wreckage was all that was left of monuments to a proud civic history, cathedrals, grand mansions, proper houses and makeshift shelters alike. The previously imposing and historic city hall had been set with pleasing symmetry in the plaza, but on that darkest of nights, as emergency vehicles and camera crews passed by, thick shadows loomed over the wreckage and trapped corpses tilting jagged edges of light and dark against each other at crazy, improbable angles. Documents, archives, and records were strewed about, sodden and pointless. The lived experiences of generations were laid waste. Nothing was left. The people had fled. History had been obliterated.

In the avenues and boulevards of the world’s greatest cities today, I feel the same sense of loss, the absurdity of human activity, the end of civilisation and time. They are empty; monuments of cruel empire stand unadmired and unattended. Wild animals are reclaiming suburbs, while urban millions flee the viral load of human company.

The Anthropocene poses fundamental questions “What does it mean to be human?” and “What does it mean to live?”, it personalises them – “What does my life mean in the face of death?” – universalises them and places them against the unimaginably vast scale of geological time. “What does human existence mean against 100,000 years of climate change? What does one life mean in the face of species death or the collapse of global civilization? How do we make meaningful choices in the shadow of our inevitable end?” asks Roy Scranton in his 2013 essay “Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene” for the New York Times.

The end of the world as we know it, death (my death and the death of humankind) hides in every moment; the Anthropocene makes of human existence but a brief moment. This epochal understanding of everything we are and have ever known is at once mind-boggling and liberating. Accepting the notion of imminent death is something I found myself struggling with during days filled with disaster and conflict. Death is the ultimate reality of our existence on this blue speck whirling slowly in the wilderness of space.

The emergence of this latest coronavirus has become a kind of metaphor for the death of a way of life that is profoundly upsetting the balance of the planet itself. Could we, individually and collectively, understand it as a way of resetting our place on earth and in the heavens? Could it be a call from the universe itself to. remember just how very brief is life? Could it liberate our species to consider how to live life so that we may die well?

Every decision and every action, fleeting and tiny, suddenly bursts with possibility and promise. Here, now – this is life.

FROM A DISTANCE – Veronica Pedrosa (The Philippine Star) – Originally published August 17, 2019 – 12:00am

BUDE, England – Alone and at peace, I stand between sea, sky and land. The vast ocean carries my gaze to the horizon; a bright silver light gleams where the turbulent sky has let slip a molten glimpse from the nearest star. The wind has picked up speed and is blowing strongly enough for me to check the rootedness of my whole feet on the ground beneath me, am I heavy enough to remain? Waves crash on cragged jaggy dark rocks. Seagulls circle the waters below and the skies above me; on the edge – clear distant horizons on all sides.

This is the third of a five-day walk I’ve chosen to do as a “summer break,” while everyone else has gone off with their own plans. Making the arrangements to do the trip have been completely different to the actual experience of walking. I’ve done all the usual things of considering maps, distances, accommodation and transport options; counting, measuring and naming. This is a section of what’s now known as the Southwest Coast Path, which was used to keep an eye out for pirates that used to hide out with their smuggled goods, dicing with death against the treacherous conditions to hide in the many inlets and coves on the coasts of Devon and Cornwall. It’s also a place of legend: a cleric in the 12th century, Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote that King Arthur of myth was conceived in a castle on this part of the coast in Tintagel (there’s no evidence to support his claim). Cornish and Breton writers associated the area with the legend of star-crossed lovers Tristan and Iseult. But the real attraction for me was actually in the act of solitary walking itself in an area of immense untamed natural beauty.

What is this part of our consciousness that bears witness to my thoughts and actions? Who is it that is noticing that I am not looking at the map as much as I was when the walk started, nor the watch? That notices the effort it takes to clamber a few centimetres at a time up the almost vertical path, my boots slipping in the mud. There is no one around to help, taunt or encourage; to measure or gauge my progress. I am accountable only to myself. This being here, now is an act of sheer will and unforced but persistent presence.

“Time is the substance I am made of. Time is the river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.” One of my favorite quotes. Written by Jorge Luis Borges, it’s this overwhelming awareness that I make and use up my own existence, that I alone am responsible for what I do with it that has been something of a mantra since I entered middle-age and tussled with cancer. Mortality is what I make of it, so planning what to do with this gift of time, unencumbered by considerations of others must be well-considered. It feels like true freedom and responsibility.

This area of England is a favorite summer destination for families with young children. I was warned not even to bother to come in August because of the traffic and crowds. But in fact they don’t seem at all interested in the coastal path. I counted maybe 10 people on the second and hardest day of my walk from remote Hartland Quay (where there’s no actual quay!) to Bude. The guides were very clear in their warnings that this bit is the hardest of the entire 630 mile path and described the terrain as “Severe”. The maps showed that if the going got too tough, there were no places to come off the trail and reach a main road with transport options.

“The first step is the hardest,” a friend’s word echoed as I set off. It was pouring with rain already and it would have been so much easier to sit with a cup of coffee listening to the old 80s music in the cheap and cheerful hotel. “Love Plus One,” warbled Haircut 100 encouragingly. It felt very light and effortless to walk into the unknown and climb high up on to the edge of the cliff that morning.

“You won’t regret it!” The words of another friend who had done the whole coastal path soon popped into my mind as I trudged up the steep path the fifth (or was it sixth?) time. When it got to be more of an effort I wanted the crutches of normal life much more. I consulted a map, took photos, checked the time, looked for some suitable music I could listen to on the trudge.

Walk the path, this path that is here and now. Not the map, not the clock, not the playlist. There is a practise to presence. The seagulls whirl above and below and remind me of a poem about wild geese crying:

“Whoever you are no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.”

Brexit and the power of perspective

(This opinion piece was originally published in the Philippine Star on 22 June 2019)

(London, United Kingdom) This column was first imagined by my mother as providing insights on events in the Philippines from the perspective of exile. That was my only perspective. as I grew with one metaphoric foot in exile in Shakespeare’s “sceptered isle,” the other in Rizal’s “perla del Mar de Oriente.” Ever since, I have found myself testing my experiences with the different lenses of an Asian (at heart) in the West and a European (by education) in the East, looking through a viewfinder adjusting focus as the lens shifted from wide angle to telephoto, seeking clarity. The view from a distance either way, as well as close-up, can sometimes provide a much needed added perspective, perhaps never more than in this time of Brexit.

In the last few hours, the subjects of the United Kingdom have learned that their next Prime Minister will almost certainly be Boris Johnson, former Mayor of London and briefly Foreign Minister. A serial adulterer who refuses to answer the simple question “How many children do you have?” Johnson is an irrepressibly loose cannon and is being compared to US President Donald Trump with comparably right-wing, isolationist views. Far more educated and witty than his US counterpart, Johnson in the past seemed well aware of his failings in leadership. “My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive,” he memorably said 15 years ago. Before Thursday night’s internal vote in which only ruling party Members of Parliament were allowed to vote, Johnson has chosen to take an uncharacteristically low profile and been criticised for it. Far more circumspect after the vote and having won handily, he told the Evening Standard “I do think it is time we had some excitement back into politics, I do, but there’s also quite a serious job of work to be done.” Johnson is clearly taking himself a lot more seriously.

Of course it is Brexit Almighty that has played a major role in Johnson’s ascent from wannabe-olive-in-waiting to actual-PM-in-waiting. The question of Britain’s relations with the rest of the world has set off a chain of events that has exposed the weaknesses of politicians and institutions alike. “Britain is in the grip of an existential crisis that reaches far beyond Brexit,” was the headline of one excellent analysis. The next resident of 10 Downing Street for example, will have won the keys after an arcane internal selection process within the ruling party over which the British people themselves will have no say: only 313 votes were cast in the second round of voting, though all members of the Conservative Party will be able to vote in the last postal ballot in the third week of July, that will still be only 124,00 people of the 66 million people in the UK. For context, that’s about the same as the population of just 3 square kilometres in Metro Manila.

Johnson has been a leading figure in the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union aka Brexit. When he was challenged about the threat to jobs and investment as raised by Airbus (French) and BMW (German), he said “F*** business.” The Financial Times commented “Never was the Brexit manifesto more succinctly captured than in Boris Johnson’s impromptu aside.”

These are the kind of moments that have had me adjusting focus as I shifted my perspective to one of distance. The constitutional crisis being experienced by the British is similar to the profound disruptions that correspondents from the West cover in countries far poorer than the UK, that this is happening At Home is the cause of mass consternation. It’s for good reason, none of the politicians appear to know what the actual impact on people is likely to be. While Brexiteers clamour their slogan to “take back control” from European Union institutions, they also say Remainers (as those who are opposed are called) are using scaremonger tactics to frighten the population about the likely negative economic impact of leaving the EU. Remainers accuse Brexiteers of overstating, if not outright lying, about the benefits of leaving. The antagonism is amplified by social media so that compromise or any form of agreement across the new political divide has become an impossibility. As things stand, Britain’s break with Europe seems inevitable, it’s just a matter of how hard or soft the impact will be and how far it will reach, because there are those who wonder if the seeds of a global recession are being sown.

Brexit is literally all that people in the UK have been talking about since then-PM David Cameron announced there would be a referendum. The “sceptred isle” has become an echo chamber in which millions of voices are struggling to be heard on a plethora of social issues such as homelessness, healthcare and education, but there is no one to listen. Bickering among themselves in the corridors in Westminster, politicians are in a whirlpool of conflict in which there is no room for consensus. This, in the land where the political elite of the time drew up the Magna Carta to protect the personal liberties of individuals “from the arbitrary authority of the despot” 900 years ago. Welcome to the 21st century.

England has forgotten the writings of one of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, John Donne, after he heard the church bell ring for the dead. Shifting lenses himself from the personal and spiritual to the public and political, his focus remained sharply on community, identifying not just on himself but the other.

“No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less …any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.”

(Originally published in the Philippine Star on 27 July 2019)

Imagine a crisis in which the Philippines was deeply divided over the issue of whether and how to leave an economic and political common market that has brought peace across much of the continent (just as Asean aims to be), even though doing so would mean the nation itself would collapse. Imagine that because the people of the Visayas were intent on remaining in the regional group and because the hard-won peace agreement in Mindanao were dependent on the lack of a border between Mindanao and the rest of the Philippines (it is) the integrity of the nation and peace itself were at risk. Imagine then, that ONLY the members of the ruling party chose a leader for the entire country that is determined to abandon the regional group with or without an agreement that might ease the transition.

This is the extraordinary catastrophe facing the people of the United Kingdom in an epic political struggle that’s just taken another twist with the election of a new Prime Minister Boris Johnson who is determined to deliver Brexit, the withdrawal of the UK from the European Union by October 31st, with or without a deal as he stated in his first appearance as PM in the House of Commons, the lower house of the legislature here.

But you wouldn’t think there was anything wrong if you were to take Johnson’s statement at face value. He declared that in 30 years time the nation would look back on this as “the beginning of a new golden age for the United Kingdom” with the abandonment of the European Union.

Lawmakers, known as Members of Parliament or MPs, then got their chance to question Johnson. The opposition leader responded that while nobody underestimates the UK, the UK is concerned that the PM overestimates himself. One welcomed him as “the last Prime. Minister of the United Kingdom.” Another asked him how he would choose between leaving the EU or the break up of the UK.

That’s because the voters in Scotland voted against leaving the EU in the referendum in 2016, and the Scottish government is raising the possibility of a vote to break away from the United Kingdom.

Peace itself is at risk on the island of Ireland, where Northern Ireland is part of the UK, but the rest is the Republic of Ireland which is part of the EU. Up to now there has been an “open border” between the two territories because both belonged to the EU, and is a crucial factor in the agreement that brought peace to the island in 1998 after a brutal war in which more than 3500 people were killed.

But if the UK leaves the EU, Ireland and Northern Ireland would have different trade regimes, so it was agreed between the EU and the government of Boris Johnson’s predecessor that whatever happens as a result of Brexit there would not be any new physical checks at the border. Indeed, the EU insists that even if there were no deal encompassing all the aspects of relations there would be a “backstop” — meaning that even as a last resort there would still be a seamless border and close relations between the UK and the EU.

That’s far too close for those that support leaving the EU in Parliament, so they rejected the deal negotiated by former PM forcing her resignation and bringing the nightmare of the “no deal Brexit” several steps closer to reality. Boris Johnson, Brexit poster boy, has taken her place and decisively replaced her cabinet with politicians who he said had all committed to leaving the EU on or before 31 October, “no ifs, no buts,” and he underlined his pledge to remove the backstop.

As soon as he’d spoken, the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, said eliminating the backstop was “unacceptable”.

The EU Commission’s President, Jean-Claude Juncker, also underlined the EU’s position in a call with Mr Johnson, saying the withdrawal agreement negotiated between the bloc and Mrs May was “the best and only agreement possible” for Brexit. It’s estimated that Brexit has already cost the UK the equivalent of $82 billion.

The business of politics takes a summer break at this point but it will only be a brief respite. The country is far from ready for a no deal scenario. For example every component of every export will need to pass EU inspection and regulations, with the necessary documentation and licenses. Hundreds of thousands of trucks cross. both ways every week and there will be long lines at the new border once Brexit is achieved.

Johnson has said that the cost of leaving the EU will be “vanishingly inexpensive” but the respected UK Trade Policy Observatory has measured the impact across all of industry at a staggering $27 billion a year to compensate businesses, or more than half of England’s budget for schools.

As things stand, no one knows what is going to happen and the country is in a state of deep uncertainty and division over what it is and where it stands in the most fundamental sense. There are those who would see the UK’s predicament as a lesson in the limits of democracy and the wages of populism. Boris Johnson is the latest populist demagogue to join the ranks of Donald Trump in the US (who has welcomed Johnson as “Britain Trump”), Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and our own Rodrigo Duterte.

The winds of change have blown politics decisively to the right, with very real consequences for ordinary people. Peacebuilders and humanitarians are grappling with the conflicts and say we are dealing with the highest levels of displacement on record as world leaders take more trenchant, belligerent positions.

What’s happening in the UK would have been unthinkable to those in the mainstream as recently as five years ago. That this can happen in a place where government institutions and democratic principles are as well-founded and strong as here, in an economy as prosperous as here, as integrated with the global economy as here, in my view demonstrates how fragile and precious the ideals of peace, freedom and justice are, and how they must be fought for with every thought and action by individuals, leaders and societies as a whole if they are ever to make a difference in our lives.