Answer:
This reluctance, let me assure you, does not stem from a lack of willingness to inflict opinions on a captive audience. I know that invitations to deliver commencement day addresses in this premier University of our country are not to be taken lightly. Why then do I agonize through this traditional ritual? Where does this hesitation flow from?
It expresses a sense of worry and guilt. I wonder if, in more ways than one, our generation may have failed your generation. How does one impart the customary commencement counsel, if the old have not come up fully to the expectations of the young?
Our profligacy in years past, for example, dissipated your inheritance of abundant God-given resources. Our once magnificent dipterocarp forests have been ravaged. Our rivers are polluted with silt, our coral reefs destroyed by blast fishing, our mangroves decimated and Laguna de Bay is now a dying lake. If this plunder is not checked, the Philippines will experience increasing poverty, despair and will spiral downwards into ‘the ranks of the very poorest of nations.’
Today, our legendary Philippine mahogany forests are just that – legend. Out of the original 30 million hectares of trees, only 900,000 hectares of virgin dipterocarp forests remain. At present rates of cutting, these could disappear within 7 to 12 years – just as the firstborns of today’s graduating class enter primary school.
