A Facebook (FB) video of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos during a briefing where it appears he is unaware of climate change needs context.
Posted on Sept. 26, the 24-second clip currently making the rounds online shows Marcos saying:
“Is that the trend? ‘Yan na yung climate change? Wala naman tayong ganiyan noon eh. Matagal na tayong nagbabantay ng bagyo. It’s not, doesn’t… Hindi ganiyan. (Is that climate change? We didn’t have anything like that before. We’ve been monitoring typhoons for a long time. It’s not, doesn’t… (sic) It’s not like that.) Oh well. Okay, so, that’s something we have to deal with.”
The post’s caption also carried the first three sentences of the statement above.
His statement prompted several netizens to quickly comment that the president is unaware of climate change despite talking about the issue during his speech at the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 20.
Some FB users also interpreted the clip as Marcos downplaying the issue or denying climate change for calling it a “trend”.
The FB video needs context. The statement was generally about the recent trend of rapidly developing typhoons hitting the country and not about his unawareness or denial of climate change.
It is a snippet from a 52-minute video of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council’s situation briefing on Super Typhoon Karding on Sept. 26 led by Marcos.
At the 35:49-minute mark, Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla talked about how the power sector must coordinate with other agencies to prepare for rapidly developing typhoons.
Lotilla said: “Relating to the PAGASA report, this is the second time that we have a very rapid development of the typhoon. And unfortunately, October, November, December, especially the Visayas and Mindanao areas. Historically, we have had super typhoons during this period. So, I think, we in the power sector will coordinate with the other agencies in preparing for this. So, every typhoon has the potential of developing into a much stronger one. And we have very little time to prepare.”
Marcos then asked about the recent trend of typhoons rapidly developing, citing Typhoon Odette in 2021 as an example.
Marcos said:
“Is that going to be a tendency that the typhoons develop so rapidly? Odette developed over 24 hours. It was not a super typhoon, then boom, it was. This one, the same. We went from Signal No. 2 to Signal No. 5 in a period of three hours, four hours. Is that going to be the, ano… Is that the trend? ‘Yan na ‘yung (Is that) climate change?”
“Wala naman tayong ganiyan noon eh. Matagal na tayong nagbabantay ng bagyo. It’s not … Hindi ganiyan. (We didn’t have that before. We’ve been monitoring typhoons for a long time. It doesn’t… it’s not like that.) Oh well. Okay, so, that’s something I’d have to deal with.“
The video clip circulated online a day after Super Typhoon Karding (international name: Noru) made landfall in the country.
The FB video posted by a netizen garnered over 338,000 views, 1,900 comments and 10,000 shares before it was taken down. Both the statement and the video needing context have been reposted by other FB pages and Twitter accounts.
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