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Andres Bonifacio's
Tagalog 
Nation & Predictionsof Global Warming (Bonifacio Series II)
by 
 Jesusa Bernardo
 First published 
May 10, 2009 GMT 
+8, at 
 Sobriety for the Philippines
(Check out 
:Gat Andres Bonifacio: The Anti-Colonial National Hero of the Philippines (Bonifacio Series I)
A century and nearly a score years ago today, amost patriotic and fervent hero of a land to thesoutheast was executed by his coup plottingsecret enemies during the peak of his people'sstruggle for national independence. Therevolutionary leader was Andres Bonifacio y deCastro, murdered May 10, 1897 in a remotemountain in the archipelagic islands the herocalled the
 Haring Bayang Katagalugan
(Sovereign Nation of 
 Katagalugan
). The name"
 Katagalugan,
" derives from "
Tagalog 
," whichis a constriction of the word "
taga-ilog 
" thattranslates as "(person/people) from the areaalong the river" or, simply, riverine. The hero'streacherous execution marked not only the elitetakeover of the revolutionary mass movementhe built but, as well, the adoption of a colonialname for his country well past into itsindependence period until today. Tagalog was junked and the old name given by Spain after its king, Philip II, stuck. Called "
 Las Islas de Filipinas
" by Spain--a name favored even by itsother elitist heroes--or "Philippine Islands," byits next colonial master, the United States of America, it is now called the Republic of thePhilippines.
 
The emerging global cataclysm of global warming, however, may just give the people of Bonifacio's
Tagalog 
islands--the "Filipinos" of today--the unlikely opportunity of reverting to thenon-colonial country name that reflects and asserts their pre-colonial heritage, and nationalistidentity and aspirations. The predicted rise of sea levels dueto the ongoing climate changemay swamp Manila and other low-lying areas, cleansing their nation of the selfish, unpatrioticelites of class and mind in the process. A cleansing that can belikened to the Babylonian andBiblical stories of the Deluge,which would purify the population of its protractedalienation from its Malayroots--to allow the archipelagoto assume the more endemic,nationalist name of 
Tagalog.
Predictions of Climate Change Devastation
Global warming is an emerging cataclysm such that even critics of the anthropogenic-climate-change theory concede that its impacts are now upon all the inhabitants of this planet. Whilescientists are yet uncertain of whether global warming affects El Nino and other climaticvariability changes, they are more confident that it is an irreversible phenomenon that wouldimpact regional extremes in temperature, seasonal precipitation, seasonal temperature, global averagetemperature, atmospheric carbon dioxideconcentration, and tragically, the average level of sea waters.The countries that scientists consider to be mostvulnerable are the low-lying areas, particularlyarchipelagic countries in Asia, such as Bangladesh,Cambodia, India, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, andthe Philippines. According to a scientist from theAustralia-based Center for Australian Weather andClimate Research, the most plausible climatechange scenario by the end of the century is a totalsea-level increase between 1-2 meters.
 
An Inundated Philippines
The Philippines is an archipelago of over 7,000islands and islets shaped like scattered pearlsand lying approximately 500 miles off its coast.It has an irregular configuration, the coastline of which extends over 21,500 miles. Itstopography and geology depicts a beauteous piece of nature's work--coral, volcanic, principalrock formations, and diverse mountain rangesthat mostly run along the direction of the islandsthemselves and that hosts some 3,000 endemicand unique species of plants and over 500 of the700 known species of coral in the world. While its highest peak, Mt. Apo in Mindanao, stands atnearly 9,700 feet, the central plain of the biggest island, Luzon, where the capital Manila lies,rises only a mere 100 feet above sea level.According to the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF), global warming could submerge areasof Manila and eradicate a number of entire islands of the Philippine archipelago. Based on datagathered for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a rapid increase in sealevels, from between 20-40 centimeters has been observed between the 1960s and the present.This sea-level rise around the Philippine coast is at least partly due to melting glaciers and higher temperatures of ocean waters.Based on a high IPCC-predicted A2scenario of a 100 cm sea-level rise by 2080, 5,000 hectares of thecoastal region of Manila Bay would become regularly inundated. TheSulu Sea and Tubbataha Reef waters are also expected to warmand face rising atmospheric carbondioxide levels from 2ppmv-4ppmvannually. Greenpeace SoutheastAsia warns that a one-meter sea-level increase would affect 64 of the total 81 provinces, covering over 700 of the 1,610 towns.Combining these three scenarios, total inundation within this more conservative one-meter-rise prediction would cover nearly 700 million square meters of Philippine land between 2080 and2100.Predictions of an inundated Philippines are not limited to scientific studies of climate change.This author is reminded of psychic forecasts dating back to the 1970s that predicted MetroManila will be submerged in the future. At that time, logical attempts to interpret such predictions (of which Filipinos are fond of) centered on the Manila Bay reclamation projectimplemented by the Ferdinand Marcos administration. Psychic "
 Apo
," who correctly predictedUnited States President Barack Obama's 2008 electoral win by a one-third advantage*, sees a
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