It’s Burning in Manila
by Sophie Mireille Echivarre
If you’re reading this while sitting directly in front of your aircon or electric fan, either trying (and failing) to finish the semester’s backlog amid the scorching heat of the sun, you’re not alone. With the height of the Philippine summer just behind us, many students like us have struggled through classes shifting to online modalities (if not being suspended entirely) and requirements piling up faster than we can tackle them (thanks to many professors choosing to give activities asynchronously), all while hoping we’re didn’t drive up our household’s electric bill too high.
Many naysayers on social media have probably tried to gaslight you into thinking you’re overreacting. They say that when they were younger, classes were never suspended due to extreme heat. The Philippines has always been a tropical country, they say, so this is normal. You’re just whining, they say, because your generation is pampered and refuses to find ways to cope with the heat on their own. As tempting as it is to answer back and start a word war that sheds more heat than light, we need to take a step back and examine if these critiques have any validity and if not, why many continue to believe them.
While it is true that suspending classes due to the heat is a very new phenomenon, we need to keep in mind that in past decades, students were not in school during these months. Summer vacation used to fall during April and May before the calendar shift in the 2010s moved it to June and July. This meant there was no need to suspend classes in the first place. While it is true that hot summers will always be part and parcel of living in the Philippines due to its geography, many factors have caused the heat index to rise to unprecedented levels over the last decade.
PAGASA itself has described a heat index of 42°C or above as dangerous, which is even more alarming when we read the news and see that some places, such as Clark and Guian, experienced a heat index of around 50°C, which is extreme by any metric. Climate change is the biggest factor to blame, but lest we are tempted to point fingers at the masses who drive the sachet economy or wonder if we’d sweat less had we used more paper straws, we need to remember that stopping at individual efforts is short-sighted.
The anti-people interests of big business, not our personal failings, are the main contributors to the climate emergency. In both the cities and the countryside, trees are felled, and entire forests are cleared to make way for so-called development and infrastructure projects that are not truly for and by the people, leaving behind only concrete and asphalt, which trap far more heat. Even the Arroceros Forest Park and the Masungi Georeserve are under threat.
While there are many ways to cope with the rising temperatures as an individual, we need to keep in mind that not everyone has access to what they need to beat the heat. Some of us may take air conditioning, electric fans, clean water, and even taking shelter from the heat for granted, but these remain privileges for many other Filipinos. This is especially true for those who live in urban poor communities where houses are very close together and vegetation is scarce, or those who work in the informal sector, where the choice to work remotely or even to take regular breaks for water and shade are just some of the many labor rights denied to them.
It was an especially cruel summer for our farmers and fisherfolk, whose livelihoods are tied to the seasons and who are hardest hit by El Niño, not only in terms of lost earnings but also in terms of greater vulnerability to heat-related illnesses. On top of that, the medical bills from being hospitalized for heat stroke are yet another barrier between ordinary people and the basic social services we deserve during this time.
Unfortunately, the many harms caused by the heat wave will be felt now as the wet season says hello to us. While class suspensions and asynchronous lectures may offer a reprieve, nothing can replace face-to-face classes, which many still find to be the ideal mode of learning, especially for young children. These learning losses will be most felt in already underfunded public schools, where no amount of temporary measures will make up for overcrowded classrooms and overworked teachers.
While some temporary relief may come for farmers and fisherfolk with the end of the dry season, many will have already lost their lives to illnesses brought on by the extreme heat. Come the wet season, and farmers are also susceptible to losing their crops to La Niña. Deforestation due to “development” projects such as mining operations, landlessness due to the state’s failure to achieve genuine agrarian reform, and attacks by foreign powers such as China on our territory will also continue to eat away at the livelihoods of those in the agricultural sector, even when temperatures have cooled.
Rather than accepting these ills as inevitable, we must not wilt in the heat and allow ourselves to be defeated. As the end of the summer gives way to yet another set of challenges, with the looming threat of typhoons on the horizon, we must harness the lingering summer heat to fuel the rage that drives us to demand alternatives, pro-people development, and climate justice that holds big businesses and foreign powers accountable. The climate emergency will not be solved by the 1% purporting to be our saviors, but by us, the Filipino people who have the most to lose if Manila continues to burn.
