Ang pangalan ko ay Benhur Cortez Parungao is 68 years old and lives in Barangay Plasang Luma, Arayat, Pampanga. He is a retired government employee. He studied during his college at the Mapua Institute of Technology, but graduated at the Lyceum of the Philippines. He worked in Saudi Arabia for almost 10 years. Then he returned to Arayat Pampanga, his father's town. In 2006 he started working at the local government of Arayat as Agricultural Technologist. He became the Municipal Cooperative Development Officer until he moved to the Municipal Environment and Natural Resources Office. Until his retirement he was the municipal disaster risk reduction management officer of the municipality of Parada.
What has climate change done here?
Back in 2009 during the Typhoon Ondoy, a big rockslide and landslide happened in the upper part of the Mount Arayat. The cause of the rockslide at the foot of the mountain is because of high volume of water. This had never happened before. I'm already more than 65 years old. This is the first time I heard that such a disaster happened in the municipality of Arayat, especially in the mountain. I think this is caused by climate change.
What do you think world leaders have to do now to stop things from getting worse and to help us adapt?
Actually, for me, it's a very, very important question.
You know, I'm not a religious person but when I pray, I pray that all the tension happening in the world right now should be stopped. Instead of pouring their budget, their money, their expertise in how to create destructive weapons, they should divert their expertise, their experience, their wealth on how to solve climate change.
If that happens, more than four billion people, or maybe about five billion people around
the world will benefit. Like the war in Ukraine and Russia, instead of spending a lot of money, instead of killing people, why don't these powerful and advanced countries divert their budget into solving the problem of climate change?
For instance, I heard in the news that advanced capitalist countries are considering providing funding to smaller, developing countries like the Philippines to help them cope with the effects of climate change—effects primarily caused by these advanced economies, not by the developing countries.
Although many Filipinos lack discipline when it comes to environmental care, I believe the main drivers of climate change are the advanced capitalist countries, not the developing nations.
Life expectancy 2023
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