Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Breathing can harm your health ...


My mother is a wonderful person! Really! I know we all say this. But I want to stress it. In spite of the hard things she had to cope in life she always remained a sweet person. I can never say enough how much I admire her for that. But she was never an activist. My father, on the other side, was a trade unionist during the hot period after the Portuguese revolution. Hence I always got the comment “You must have gotten that from your father” that always made me smile.

But I remember my mother being very fired up about one issue many years ago. They wanted to build a coal power plant in my hometown. And I remember this particular discussion at home, during a meal: it couldn’t be, it would pollute the air, it was bad for our health, it would be bad for my bronchitis, it couldn’t be and “Vianenses” where protesting against it.

And they succeeded. I’m grateful and proud of them for that. I don’t remember when this happened, but surely around 30 years ago.



 30 years gone and Europeans are paying the price for harmful decisions from previous decades. But our leaders didn’t learn anything and insist in doing the same mistakes. Or maybe not... the problem is that human life has a low Greedy’s rating.

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Utopia

Will Pappenheimer,Launch of "Sky Mills" at Brooklyn Utopias
I believe we are jeopardising our world. I believe we are jeopardising the future of future generations. I believe we are jeopardising our own future.
And I also believe we can do better. I believe change is possible. Too many people have changed. Nonetheless, it’s also true that change needs to reach a lot more. We can still make this world a sustainable place for life, including human life. We can still make it a place of harmony, where the absurd demands of humankind can be harmonised with our ecosystem.
Call it utopia... I did!