Two weeks after my visit to the PCC training camp, I had the opportunity to watch the eco caravan perform at two primary schools in two different rural districts of Puerto Princesa City. The audience at each performance consisted of at least fifty children and teachers. In most of the plays, the actors represented local animal and plant species discussing issues of environmental and social relevance, such as conflicts between local fishermen and environmental authorities. Human characters were portrayed as both destroyers (either intentionally or unintentionally) and protectors of nature. The anthropogenic impacts on natural processes were hardly ever questioned. As discussed above, causal connections were often established between natural disasters and environmental behavior that was considered to be morally wrong.
This section presents three stage plays that were primarily about climate change.8 All of them were written and directed by (former) PCC staff members.
8 I want to thank Cherry de Dios for providing the scripts of the plays, and Jessa Garibay-Yayen for their translation from Tagalog into English.
“Climate”
The name of the first play presented here is “Climate”. It has four main characters—the Sun, the Ozone, Joel, and Vincent—and starts with a dialogue between Sun and Ozone:
Ozone: Sun, until when will you continue to give off heat?
Sun: I don’t know, Ozone. All I know is that this is the role that was given to me by Bathala.9
Ozone: Ha, poor humans! They are continually experiencing the constant change in the weather.
Sun: It’s their fault, Ozone! They have neglected their duties so much.
Ozone: And what duties are those, Sun?
Sun: What are you thinking, Ozone? You still don’t know what they did to you. That is why we have these fluctuations in the weather, like the warming and sometimes the never-ending rain—because of what they did to you!
Ozone does not seem to understand what the Sun is talking about and asks her to explain it. So, the Sun invites Ozone to follow her in order to show how people are responsible for all those weather variations:
Sun: Come, accompany me to peek into the plains of the world, and we will look for the kind of person which causes the so-called climate change, or frequent weather fluctuations.10
On their lookout through the sky they eventually discover two men on an island who illegally cut mangroves with chainsaws. This activity, which is illegal on Palawan, is a source of income for many poor people, who use the wood for charcoal production. Ozone gets very excited, turns to the audience, and says:
Ozone: Kids, this means that we will find out one of the reasons for the warming of the earth. We should all listen, so that we will understand, okay?
9 Bathala is a deity and creator of the universe in pre-Hispanic Filipino mythology.
10 The English term climate change is used here as a literal translation of the Tagalog terms for frequent change (pagbabago-bago) and weather (panahon). Panahon, however, also means season or time.
Both Sun and Ozone approach the men and eavesdrop on them. They become witnesses to how Vincent is rushing his friend Joel, arguing that he doesn’t want to get caught by the police and pay a fine. Since it is an unusually hot day, work is getting done slowly. Joel tells Vincent that he is concerned about global warming. He explains to his ignorant friend that cutting mangroves is one of its causes. He notes that it causes droughts to occur, and coral reefs to die. Due to the destruction of the forests there will not be left much to clean
“the smoke of the society”. The ozone that is supposed to control the temperature of the earth already has holes due to the human use of chlorofluorocarbons.
Joel: That is why the heat of the sun passes through the ozone. It is no longer controlled by the ozone. Not like before, when it still didn’t have holes. It provides the right warmth and coldness that every living creature needs.
Vincent starts to understand. He agrees with Joel that they should change their destructive behavior and find a better livelihood, “like the right way of fishing and vegetable growing, and farming”. Joel adds that it would also be a good idea to take part in the community tree planting activities. In the closing scene, Ozone also understands its role in the world now. It turns to the audience and requests to always protect the environment and support its community in environmental activities.
What is very paradigmatic in “Climate” is how closely intertwined the cultural model of climate change and ozone depletion are, which confirms many other studies mentioned above. The common ground for both models seems to be their anthropogenic causes, which are cognitively categorized as environmentally destructive behavior, causing interference with the atmosphere and, therefore, the weather.
According to this localized heuristic, the only logical conclusion is to act environmentally friendly in order to stabilize unusual weather patterns.
Fig. 3.3 Eco caravan performing “Climate” in a primary school (photo by author, November 2013), CC BY-4.0.