A hotter, scarcer and more

open world
By: Rodel D. Lasco - @inquirerdotnet
05:02 AM July 10, 2019

Recently, we were privileged to host business strategist and best-selling author Andrew
Winston at our first Climate Dialogues in Manila. Winston’s best-selling book is titled “The Big
Pivot,” which is essentially a challenge to business enterprises to cope with and even prosper
under three conditions prevailing in the world today — hotter, scarcer and more open.

First, we live in a hotter world as greenhouse gases continue to push air temperatures up.
Recently, the carbon dioxide concentration (the most important greenhouse gas) of the earth’s
atmosphere breached 415 parts per million, the highest ever in recorded history. In the
Philippines, Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration
records show an average warming rate of 0.1 degree Celsius per decade. Thus, the future is
bound to be even hotter, which will bring with it more extreme events and disasters of
unprecedented proportions.

Second, we live in a world where our natural capital is rapidly depleting. For example, lush
tropical forests used to cover 90 percent of the Philippines, but now we have barely 25-percent
forest cover. Mangrove forests have declined by more than 50 percent from about 500,000
hectares in the early 1920s to around 250,000 ha today (Philippine Climate Change Assessment
Report, 2017).

Third, we live in an ever-connected world through the internet and 24/7 cable TV, where what
happens in one obscure corner of the globe can become viral in an instant.

What are its implications? Winston’s “The Big Pivot” details how business enterprises can
navigate this new world. But what about other sectors of society, especially in a developing
country like the Philippines?

First, our policy makers and local executives must realize that business-as-usual risk-coping
mechanisms will no longer work. While risks of climate-related disasters increase, the natural
capital needed to address them has decreased.

For instance, as sea level rises (because of hotter climate), there will be higher storm surges.
Mangrove forests could help reduce the impacts of storm surges, but we have lost most of our
mangrove forests through deforestation and coastal degradation. Given this scenario, more
innovative ways of responding to disaster risks are needed.

 
Second, we must redouble our efforts to conserve and manage our remaining natural
resources. There is very little we can do to stop global warming. But there is much we can do to
conserve our remaining forest, land, coastal and water resources.

Third, we must take advantage of the information highway that the internet has created. A
more open world means that ordinary citizens can access information that hitherto was
available only to a privileged few. This increased transparency makes it harder for those who
contribute to making our world warmer and resources scarcer to hide their deeds. We must
find ways to make government, business and ordinary citizens more accountable for their
actions through the openness that the wired world affords us.

While the Philippines shares in the experience of these global megatrends, it faces some of its
own seismic societal transformation such as rapid urbanization and demographic shifts. But
with an emerging change of voter preferences in local leaders, there may be hope for lasting
societal change that will allow us to cope and even prosper in a hotter, scarcer and more open
world.

Read more: https://opinion.inquirer.net/122504/a-hotter-scarcer-and-more-open-world#ixzz5tIrsuXLL 

‘Momol,’ ‘cocol’ and

more
By: Michael L. Tan - @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:04 AM July 10, 2019

I just finished a week of orientation workshops for parents of our new freshmen.
Amid all the parents’ anxieties, I just had to deal with the issue of boyfriends and
girlfriends. My position is that the worst thing a parent can do with their college-age
(remember that’s 18 now) children is to forbid such relationships.

College is a time not just for academics but for personal development. The students
— I’ve consciously tried to avoid calling them “kids” and “mga bata” — are young
adults, and they have to learn to deal with life’s challenges; that includes
relationships with someone special.
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I believe this foray into personal relationships can start even as early as high school,
with parental guidance (okay, okay, with parental vigilance). One important reason
for this is that we’re getting college students who know little or nothing about these
special relationships, and then get into trouble because they haven’t learned the
values involved, the need for give and take and respect.

The world is getting more and more complicated now, with changing definitions of
social obligations and responsibilities. In the 1990s, when I was researching young
adult sexuality with the late Dr. Tess Batangan, we found that “MU” or mutual
understanding meant “We’re on, and we’re in an exclusive relationship.” In recent
years, I’ve found MU evolving to mean “We’re on, but we can be open to other
boyfriends or girlfriends.”

The situation becomes more complicated when sex enters the picture, sometimes as
early as high school, which might be in an MU relationship, exclusive or not.
Or, it could be in a relationship that used to be described as “friends with benefits” —
best of friends but with no romance, no attachments. Lately, the term seems to have
given way to “momol” — “make out, makeout lang” — also sometimes known as
“momo extreme.” While friends with benefits still has some feelings involved,
supposedly for friends, momol is brutal in its “lang” (only).

I suspect momol, or its underlying principles, may have first emerged with our
overseas workers. I’ve talked with so many of them — from seamen to caregivers —
and they tell me how difficult it is to be away from loved ones, including spouses,
and to stay alone. What we call momol today would have come about, a way of
saying, “Let’s keep each other company, be friends with benefits, but only here,
while we’re away from the Philippines.”

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Are young people becoming “immoral”?

No, let’s not forget that even today, for low-income communities, early courtship and
marriage is the norm, given the lack of other options in life. In contrast, for those
who do make it to college, we’re asking them to wait when it comes to relationships,
and to wait even longer with sex.

Ironically, momol might actually be a response to parental advice: “Don’t make any
commitments yet.” Which ends up with MU but seeing other people. Or, with momol,
sex without commitments or attachments.

Young people aren’t that naïve, though. In the friends with benefits era, I would hear
people say, “Talo ang babae (the woman loses).” But now, I hear “sa momol, lahat
talo (in momol, everyone loses).” The “losing” used to be couched in terms of female
chastity, but now, there’s a recognition that the losses, on both sides, can be severe
when you play emotional charades.
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Parents and guardians need to talk with their children about this momol, without
being judgmental but explaining the complexities of feelings and the risks involved
in playing with emotions. Give your own experiences, but don’t expect young people
to always relate to your era.

More importantly, young people themselves need to be more honest in talking about
momol and its possible consequences. A female friend of mine, in her 30s, separated
and now dating, and reluctant to go into new relationships because of her children,
tells me that another option is to go slow even before going into momol.
There are other terms, she says, that young people use. There’s “cocol” or “coffee
coffee lang.” There’s “wowol,” “workout workout lang” (in the gym — but who knows
if wowol takes on other types of workouts?).

She describes with a laugh how, even with cocol and wowol, emotions and
attachments can develop. She has preteen daughters and is aware that, sooner rather
than later, she will need to talk with them about the complicated alphabets of
relationships.

mtan@inquirer.com.ph

Read more: https://opinion.inquirer.net/122508/momol-cocol-and-more#ixzz5tL0NbOy3 
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