TODAY, everybody is talking about global warming and is quite panicky. Of course, it must be taken seriously. As one Australian futurist would grimly put it, we are in the brink of another Ice Age. China and the rest of Southeast Asia will be submerged in water. And everybody will have to move somewhere in Norway, Greenland, Iceland the rest of the Scandinavian region because by that time, the glaciers in northern Europe will have melted. And all of that will supposedly occur in the next 40 years or so. If that will be true, then definitely that will not be a long time from now. That’s why everybody must be ready. However, no one is heeding the warning of the Australian futurist seriously. Still, there is some hope.

Today’s educational degrees taken in college are geared towards environmental concerns. It’s not just climatology which is involved but every aspect of education. Environmental concerns must be touched in every aspect of education known to mankind. Let’s start with agriculture. There must be constant studies on how to have organic agriculture. In the United States and in certain farms in Israel, there is what is called as extreme organic agriculture. They’re practicing not just organic agriculture, it’s beyond that actually. In extreme organic agriculture, they use composting or filling in carcasses of dead animals to be used as fertilizer. Now that is recycling in the truest sense of the word.

Now let’s cross to another educational field – journalism. In developing countries, they have this tertiary program called development education. It is geared towards guiding impoverished communities towards development and progress using any means of communication. Now development communication may be practiced in the First World as well. The concepts are basically similar but we with one goal – the survival of humankind. That may be stuff presented in late 90s disaster movies such as Armageddon and Deep Impact but with the impending and very grim result of global warming that we all dreadfully wait, this is one thing for real of course. Communication with an environmental awareness twist has already been practiced by such Hollywood actresses as Hayden Panettiere who defied Japanese laws and evaded arrest, leaving back to the United States unscathed, by penetrating the facility of a Japanese whaling firm and vandalizing it. It is the stuff that Greenpeace is made of.

If you want to help, you can take the less violent approach. In the United States, there is a group of geneticists who are now studying on how to create genes that will steer the mass production of biofuels. They are in essence playing God but for me, they are just divine instruments who are used by a Higher Being so we can offset what we can to minimize the effects of global warming around us. Craig Venter’s effort is highly laudable and it is the kind of spirit that we must get involved in.