ACTIVTY # 1

Is Globalization a Friend or a Foe of Environment?

According to the National Geographic Society, many scholars stated that the
Globalization started around with Christopher Columbus’ voyage at year 1492. It is also known
that people had been trading or exchanging knowlegde, products, and culture long before that,
but it wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution at 1760s Globalization accelerated and countries was
able to reach different parts of the world, but at the expense of the environment. If companies
need to grow large enough to reach different parts of the world, then they will need the most
efficient methods for producing their products and so they need factories and also need great
amounts of power or electricity and the cheapest, efficient and reliable way to get access to
electricities are through the coal-fired power plants and releases huge amounts of CO 2 as a
consequence. Same as the ways to transport these products to different places and countries,
which uses planes, ships, and trucks. Deforestation is also very common because people need
places to build houses, factories, or farm land to use and as a result we now have the crisis of
Global Warming. Despite the problem that the Global Warming poses, we have no perfect
solutions to solve it. So the answer to the question whether Globalization is a friend or a foe of
environment would be Globalization is a foe of the environment, because of the destructions it
caused to forests and mountains and the pollution of the bodies of waters. The effects of
Globalization had been against the environment, but thanks to this many people live their lives
significantly easier compared to the past millenia, with the threat of chronic starvation and
disease, the difficulties of raising a family and all the death associated with that are all reduced
significantly by Globalization. No system created by man is perfect and ofcourse it is going to
have side effects, and if we want to reduce the effects of globalization to the environment, then
we will have to continue to receive the benefits of globalization which would increase the threats
for the short term, and to continue to create technological breakthroughs to help alleviate the
negative effects and to make every poor countries out of poverty as soon as possible, because if
they do, they will stop thinking about what to do so they can have something to eat for tomorrow
and they’ll start to care for the future and the environment and as a consequence the environment
cleans up.
Activity # 3

Make a two-page reflection paper about the open letter from the Cstholic Bishop Pastoral
Council of the Philippines. Be guided with the given rubrics below.

According to what I can understand, CBCP is reminding the public or informing them the
things that we do to the nature. Too much of anything is definitely harmful, and it may benefit
you in the short term, but you need to exercise moderation because it will definitely backfire.
Just for example, too much of compassion can destroy someones life in the future, because if you
do everything for someone you care for, you will undermine their autonomy and they won’t
know what to do if they are left to fend for themselves and it destroys them. A lot of people
today, suffer from poverty, although we do not so bad now compared to centuries ago, but as a
consequence of that people will do anything for the sake of getting out of poverty. Still, it
doesn’t excuse us to desecrate the very thing that we get our resources from. There is this
sentence in the bible where after god made humans at his image, he said to them, “Be fruitful and
multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the
birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on earth”. God gave us the authority
to have control, to have power over all things in this world, and to use the resources of this planet
to help ourselves from terrible situations like, famine, disease, or shelter. But to have power over
them means that we must be responsible on using it as well. You need what’s best for you, but
you also want what’s best for everything around you and for you to live in harmony with nature.
We can use everything in nature, but we do not have to do it in a way that pollutes everything
around us at the same time.

The CBCP also mentioned that we need to be aware and remember the state of the nature
of the Philippines back them and compare them to what we have today. Because of the methods
that we used back then unaware of the possible outcomes, we currently suffer the consequences
of that right now. Fishes losing their habitat are either forced to migrate to other places or
disappear from the face of the earth because of our dinamite fishing. Crops are filled with
chemicals because it has trouble growing due to the lack of nutrients on the soil and to keep
away the pests that destroys the crops because the numbers of the predators of these pests were
dwindling and also these chemicals may flow to bodies of water especially rivers and
contaminating them from their crystal clear state to a greenish murky water. We must be aware
on how they were before, and to reflect on the things that we have done and to make sure that
they do not deteriorate any further, but to them to heal over time.

What can we do about it is I think is a complicated question, because developing

countries may not take the issue of the negative effects of the prosperity alarmingly. It is because
they would be very busy in looking for food for the next day up to at least several months.
Maybe we can do something to alliviate the pollution but not to cure it completely, and because
if we do, we may magnify a different kind of risk as well like maybe at the cost of homes, or
perhaps jobs for poor people living in the country if we took extreme measures that will probably
erase the problem. Developed countries have the luxury of thinking about this because they have
enough money to sustain them for years and actually make them look maybe years into the future
and to start caring for the environment. Although developed countries may not have a significant
impact to the world if they start to create huge movements for their countries to counter this
problem. The best example would be, if Canada stopped producing CO 2 for 25 years, then the
amount of Carbon that they would be able to cut back, will be the same to what will China
produce next year. So the best way for the environment to clean up is to make poor countries,
desperately so, out of poverty which will increase pollution in the short term but once they’re out
then they will start to care about the environment. We must also be disciplined to somehow
reduce the effects of pollution in the environment as we climb our way up to prosperity.
Activity #4 TABLE COMPLETION

Write down 5 environmental problems discussed in this module and give solutions to mitigate these
problems.

Environmental Problems asssociated to Mitigation Methods

Globalization
1. Deforsestation Movements like planting trees to available
spaces or to forests cleared for wood.
2. Clean water supply Creating of proper and effective sewage
system that not leads to bodies of water but
instead purifies them to become somewhat
useable
3. Global warming Education, to invest into the future for
technological breackthroughs for cleaner and
cheaper energy because there are no perfect
solutions to solve global warming.
4. Food Security Rare use of chemical fertilizers that may flow
and contaminate rivers and promotion of the
use of organic soil for cleaner farming.
5. Habitat loss for animals Prevent the use of slash and burn methods or
any form of deforestation as much as possible
and to create forests that may sustain and help
these creatures to procreate out of their
endangered status.