NO HOLDS BARRED

Ike Señeres
Planting seeds for the future

I find it sad to say that in the present practice of reporting the news in the mass media, it seems that news is not reported if there is no blood, no sex and no violence. We could blame that perhaps on the law of supply and demand, because the market (the readers, listeners and viewers) seem to be accustomed already to the dark side of the news.

In “Bears & Bulls”, my television program at the Global News Network (GNN), I am starting to push the argument that green companies are good investments because if companies are not green, they are bad for the economy and are, therefore bad investments. This is not really a new idea, because even the companies that used to be polluters are now turning around, realizing perhaps that they would start losing their markets not unless they mend their ways.

Pursuing the same argument, I am also saying in my show that all actions that are good for the environment should be reported as news, not just as news, but as good news. Should environment news have a demand in the market? I think so, if only the readers, listeners and viewers would realize that the good news is for their own good.

Very few people have heard of the La Salle Institute for the Environment (LIFE). In fact, very few people know that the Christian Brothers are actively doing something about the environment, and are in fact supporting moves that would result in good news for the environment. Located in a small office in far flung De La Salle Araneta University in Malabon City , LIFE is now doing big things that could end up big in the news later on.

Among the other initiatives of LIFE is a study that they are conducting, on how to tie up the existing One Million Trees (OMT) project of the De La Salle Schools to the carbon credits scheme of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as defined in the Kyoto Protocol. LIFE is no longer talking of ideas in this case, because as of now, the OMT project has already planted more than a hundred thousand trees in around their campuses. As of now, De La Salle has 17 schools in their system, including LIFE which was given the status of a school, just to show you how serious they are.

Come to think of it, La Salle was not even thinking of CDM when they started the OMT project. That means that they had the pure intention of helping the environment with their project, not realizing perhaps that there is real money that could be made in planting trees under the carbon credits scheme.

It could just be plain coincidence, but La Salle also has another project that has the objective of raising funds so that eventually, at least half of La Salle students would be scholars from needy families. This is like history and destiny turning full circle, because this was the original purpose of Saint John Baptist de la Salle, to give education to the poor.
Putting two and two together, LIFE is now working on the framework to implement a system wide program to plant more trees, perhaps over and above the one million target, so that more money could be raised for more scholarships, considering that there is real money that could be made by producing carbon credits that could be sold in international markets.
The mechanics still have to be worked out, but conceptually, the plan is for students to plant trees that they would legally own, complete with certificates of title, because these titles would form the backbone for a system of calculating the economic values of these trees for future trading purposes.

Conceptually, what is being worked on is a system that would take on the characteristics of a futures trading system, wherein students could enroll on the guarantee that their trees would eventually earn enough for them to pay for their tuitions and other school related expenses.

In a manner of speaking, this trees-for-scholarships program could turn out to be better than a college assurance plan. To me, this is good as good news could get, more so now that the educational pre-need industry has gone through difficult times. Probably the best news so far in this regard is the news that a private company is now being formed to make sure that the carbon credits that will be produced by La Salle will be sold and turned into cash.

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