A Culture of Death

Male chicks are worthless to the egg industry, so every year millions of them are tossed into trash bags to suffocate, or are thrown into high-speed grinders called “macerators” while they are still alive.

PETA
The Egg Industry

DAGUPAN CITY—Environmentalists and church groups have petitioned the government to stop the “slaughter” of 1,829 trees that were marked for cutting or earthballing in five towns and a city in Pangasinan province to make way for the expansion of the MacArthur Highway, a major link to northern Luzon.

Philippine Daily Inquirer
1829 Trees to be killed for a road plan

I read the news and shook my head. When a celebrity scandal broke out last week, the entire nation's public discourse revolved around speculations and timeline of events surrounding Vhong Navarro's unfortunate affair. When temperatures dropped at record levels, not one soul spoke alarm at the extreme weather and thought of scorching summers ahead. In my head, I thought of humanity and its misplaced aspirations. Swirling, the voices of self-preservation and collective goodness are drowned with noises of novelty and self-serving desires.

Sure there is a need to cut those trees for a road widening project. Infrastructure improvements like these are a sure sign of progress. But did the people behind the idea ever thought that those irreplaceable centuries-old canopies give off oxygen and cool the entire stretch of the highway? Not far from the old road, a new expressway will link the metropolis with the summer capital. What sense then, is the cutting of trees when road usage is expected to drop? As for the male chicks dumped into grinders, have they ever thought of giving them away or selling them at a lower price, to be raised for food and could feed so many? 

I know these are merely thoughts churned and regurgitated by my dreamy self. But when some idiot politician actually proposes to construct parking lots and vending stalls over the esteros slithering around Binondo, you know the entire human race is doomed.

I would not be surprised when the next natural calamity strikes, death and destruction follow its wake.