POWER TO THE PEOPLE

I ate breakfast in Antonio’s yesterday as La Tasca and the Vecina bars were both closed. It was packed largely because it was the only village bar thereabouts open. I managed to squeeze into a small table and laid before me was toast, ham and a rather odd looking tortilla with a high content of olives. I think it’s his version of the Med diet so I guess it must be good for you! I spread my newspapers out and had to re-arrange them speedily as an old man decided he was joining me. In fact he didn’t so much join me as took over my table giving me a steely glare which suggested it was me that was in the wrong place. I didn’t offer him any tortilla!

“Get on with it you fool” I hear you cry!

Both he and my heckler interrupted me as I as was dwelling on a report in Europa Sur that the Spanish Government and the power industry have been reviewing security in the country’s nuclear centres. This follows a number of safety scares over the summer months.

It so happened that just before I left the house I heard a report on the BBC Radio Four ‘Today’ programme that in around five years Britain would suffer power cuts and rationing. This is largely because 30 per cent of the country’s power output will be lost through decommissioning and little has been done to replace that loss let alone meet increased demand.

I must admit that I don’t have a fear of nuclear power largely because as a child I spent many hours fishing and paddling beside the Bradwell nuclear power station on the Blackwater in Essex. I haven’t grown two heads but I may glow in the dark like Antonio’s tortilla.

None the less Spain’s premier, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has reiterated in his State of the National address that the PSOE party would honour its election pledge to rid the country of nuclear energy. Indeed this very week the government of the País Vasco says it is decommissioning the Santa María de Garoña nuclear power plant because its level of security does not safeguard the local population or the environment.

Greenpeace is in no doubt that “nuclear energy is one of the technological errors that has most seriously damaged the environment, the economy and society in our time”.

The problem is if you take nuclear power out of the equation it is difficult to see how we are going to bridge the energy gap in the immediate and coming years. The subject is debated by “experts” and governments but the populations of all countries are ignored as if this was a matter too weighty for our poor little heads. It is the people who will have to suffer the power cuts as industry will be given priority, their energy bills will rise further and they will be confronted by possible dangers from nuclear power stations. I think it is time that “power to the people” stopped being a slogan and became a reality. It is time for us to be consulted over our future energy needs before the lights go out! This is too important an issue to be left to bumbling politicians, “the industry” or self-interest pressure groups.

A RECIPE FOR DISASTER

Today I return to another Greenpeace campaign. You’ll find my recent blog on their report on the low number of pyromaniacs being brought before the courts for causing serious summer fires in Spain elsewhere on this page.

Last week the Greenpeace vessel ‘Artic Sunrise’ sailed in to Cádiz and the environmental organisation used the occasion to launch its latest campaign ‘Una receta para el desastre’.

The ecologists aim to discourage shops from selling fish which are in danger of extinction or whose stocks are almost depleted. At the same time it is urging the public not to buy these products.

This is a Greenpeace national campaign and is backed by a report showing that not one of the major supermarket groups in the country shows the slightest conscience when it comes to buying fish. The report also points out that many shops fail to label fish products correctly, by naming the type of fish and specifying its area of origin.

Greenpeace accuses the supermarkets of being “accomplices in the destruction of sea life” and not doing enough to demand sustainable commercial development.

The environmentalists have drawn up a league table of supermarket groups and topping the chart with the most favourable score is Lidl. Greenpeace believes this is because the German company operates in a number of other countries that have higher levels of sensibilities on this issue. Close behind Lidl was Carrefour, which is French owned.

Both these foreign owned chains score 29 and 21 per cent on the Greenpeace grading system. Scoring poorly are the major Spanish chains El Corte Inglés and Eroski (3 per cent), Alcampo (2) with Mercadona in last place on one per cent.

I have shopped in Lidl but there was never a fresh fish counter. I often go to Carrefour but my habitual supermarket is Mercadona, and yes, I do buy a lot of fish. I am wise enough to not buy undersized fish but I know other shoppers will and many will seek them out. I have to admit I wouldn’t know an endangered species if I saw it gazing at me on the slab. Hence it falls to supermarkets to be responsible suppliers of fish and sadly for many of these operations the pursuit of profit comes a long way ahead of caring for the environment.

ONLY ONE IN A THOUSAND FIRES GO TO COURT

Any body who lives in Spain knows that with the heat of summer comes the forest fires. However I was stunned to learn that in an average year the country has 20,000 fires which destroy some 140,000 hectares of pasture, scrub or woodland. Even more startling is the discovery that only one in a 1,000 fires results in a court case.

Galicia, known as a wet and green area, accounts for half of the fires. It also heads the list of court convictions for both offences and criminal cases. It is followed in the summer fire league by Castilla and León, we here in Andalucía, Cataluña and Valencia. Navarra, La Rioja, País Vasco and Madrid are the autonomous regions with the least number of sentences.

All this information has been collated by Greenpeace in its recent report “Incendios Forestales, ¿el fin de la impunidad?” It says that according to data issued by the State Prosecutor there were 82 criminal convictions for starting fires in 2007 with 19 cases dismissed. Greenpeace España has studied the records of the lower courts and over the same period found 257 convictions related to fires.

Greenpeace says that in recent years the environmental prosecutors have made important strides in enforcing the law and this in turn has led to an increase in the number of cases being brought to court with convictions being handed down.

None-the-less the current statistics are:
One of every thousand people responsible for forest fires are brought to court, that’s 0.1 per cent.
Only 5.49 per cent of the surface burnt in the last ten years has been met with a conviction.
The courts have only handled 3.5 per cent of the cases involving major forest fires involving areas of over 500 hectares produced in Spain over the period 1996-2005.
In 2007 there were 11 major fires but only four people faced court action.

Greenpeace is calling for greater involvement of the public in identifying and bringing to justice those involved in starting fires. In addition it wants the prosecutors to have stronger powers and resources to investigate these cases. It wants the same prosecutors to be more involved in fire prevention with the regional authorities and for the statistics for these cases to be properly compiled and made available to the public.

If you have been in close proximity to a summer fire you will know just how frightening they are. The fact that the majority are caused by human hand, accidentally or by pyromaniacs, is a problem that needs to be urgently tackled.