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Maurizio Pallante:
"It is no easy matter to speak immediately after Beppe, but together we will nevertheless consider a few issues, beginning with some comments on the current crisis, a terrible crisis because it involves two different issues: the one is the financial issue of excess production of goods that are not selling, while the second issue is environmental, both as regards the depletion of resources and pollution, but above all the aggravation of the greenhouse effect.
This crisis has been one of excess production from the very start, even though we tried to pass it off as a financial crisis, in other words, when the American banks were granting mortgages to people who would not be able to make the mortgage payments and by doing this they were supporting the construction industry, thereby enabling them to produce more than the market could absorb, all of which was simply a way to delay the oversupply crisis that was already busy exploding. Both aspects of the crisis, namely the economic/financial/employment aspect and the environmental aspect, are due to the economic growth mechanism, namely that the aim of the economy is to produce greater quantities of goods each year, thus utilising ever increasing amounts of resources and producing ever increasing amounts of refuse, so we continue to flood the market with huge quantities of goods that can no longer be absorbed since all of our houses are already overflowing with things, meaning that we won’t have to buy more of them for years and still manage to have all we need.
The recession that we are living through is an opportunity, however, since it is putting the brakes on the environmental crisis and, because not all bad things are necessarily terrible, it is forcing us to look back on 50 years of folly in which we lived through and, due to the fact that there was an abundance of cheap crude, we were able to lose all common sense, all common sense in terms of our relationship with the world around us, as well as all common sense regarding the relationships between us and as regards our own individual lives.
There is currently a dangerous misconception that we can get through the current crisis simply by kick-starting the economy and re-launching the traditional industries, namely the motor vehicle industry and the construction industry. What they are doing today has no end in sight, it simply won’t work for two reasons: 1) simply because both the motor vehicle and the construction industries are already more than saturated, we are sitting with lots of houses standing empty and we have so many cars that we don’t know where to put them all, while the traffic in our towns has become impossible; 2) because not only is the market over saturated, but there are extreme energy consuming items. We know that our cars are energy guzzlers because they run on petrol, just like we know that our houses and buildings are energy guzzlers too, even more so than our cars because, just to heat our houses and buildings for 5 months each year, we use more energy that that used by all of the cars and trucks on our roads for the entire year.
These choices lead us nowhere. I live on the outskirts of Turin and I have absolute proof of this fact. While we hoped to re-launch the local economy thanks to the construction work for the Olympic Games, the result is that many of those buildings are already showing signs of decay, while on the other hand we have a whole lot of buildings that are consuming energy and a population, namely Turin residents who are currently in debt to the tune of 6 thousand Euro each, including babies. Were the City to sell off all of the Council owned buildings, it could pay off about half of its accumulated debt, but the city is blocked, all thanks to construction industry pressure.
The second aspect, and one that is even more problematic, is that of the motorcar. On July 2, 2007, fireworks were set off into the skies over Turin because the economy was going to recover and production levels were going to increase again thanks to the Fiat “Cinquecento”, however, just one year and four months later, all of FIAT’s workers are on short time. These people don’t know what to do, they don’t have the slightest ability to forecast the future, not even one year ahead and they are simply re-hashing what they have been saying for decades. They have no imagination and no creativity whatsoever; have you read today’s papers? How does Berlusconi propose to re-launch the economy? Via the construction industry, on the one hand by encouraging construction by private individuals in order to increase their living space, and on the other hand by encouraging public construction by means of major public works.
Not even the evidence is enough to convince these people that this route leads us nowhere, so what needs to be done in order to get out of this situation? This is an issue that also affects Obama because, although there is a vast difference between Bush and Obama, all that glitters is not necessarily gold and Obama also has a certain commitment as regards the motor car and, as regards energy matters, we always highlight the fact that while he does talk about renewable energy sources, he also talks about nuclear power, bio fuels an clean coal, because the thinking is still set on producing what we produced in the past.
What is the right way to go, you ask? What is the alternative? We must re-start the economic cycle and kick-start production and employment by means of policy measures aimed at eliminating the root causes of the two aspects of the crisis. We need to develop technologies that reduce the amount of resources used and the environmental impact. There is ample room for these technologies in the marketplace because we have totally ignored them for the past 50 years, but they enable us to give new meaning to our work by adding a human touch that will improve our world, and they enable us to transform the crisis into a great opportunity for change and improvement that we simply cannot afford to miss.
From this point of view, I believe that the candidates appearing on the civic lists for these will have to focus their campaigns on initiatives that will enable the development of technologies aimed at reducing the use of resources, aimed at reducing environmental impact, and there is a lot the local authorities can do in this regard.
Let me give you some simple examples: as regards energy, we need to set ourselves an objective to reduce our energy consumption by at least 50%. Our currently wastage of energy is running as high as 70 and even 80% and it makes no sense for a so-called civilized society to claim that it is technologically advanced while there is this kind of negative performance going on! How can the local authorities reduce energy consumption? Well, the first thing to do is to is to do an analysis of energy consumption in their buildings and fix any faults because they have no right to tell other people to behave in a certain way unless they set the right example!
There are certain public officials that have done such an analysis and so they know precisely how much energy is being consumed in each of their buildings and how much is being wasted. They are able to intervene where necessary, albeit second time around, and know when a roof needs to be replaced, or when extraordinary maintenance is required, simply because they know which buildings are wasting energy, so they can re-allocate money in order to ensure that the consumption is reduced, thereby cutting the cost to the end users.
At that point, all that is needed is a slightly higher expense on energy efficient materials, because the workers need to do the job anyway, the roof needs to be replaced anyway and the scaffolding needs to be put up anyway. At very little additional cost, the extraordinary maintenance can become a great opportunity to show commitments and to reduce our environmental impact.
Once we have put our own house in order, the second point concerns the building regulations. All councils are entitled to make their own building regulations, as well as an energy appendix stating that: in this municipal district, no houses may be built, and no old houses may be renovated, if they consume more than 7 litres per cubic metre per year, which is the maximum permissible amount in the Alto Adige Region, as well as in Germany and a number of other European Countries. Still in terms of kick-starting employment and the production of these technologies, they must encourage the establishment of firms known as Energy Service Companies, firms that do energy renovation at their own expense and then recover their costs by cashing in, for a specified number of years, on any energy savings that they are able to achieve. This involves arranging a massive re-allocation of funds, funds that are currently being spent on purchasing fuel from abroad, to rather paying the wages and salaries to people that can help us to reduce our consumption of fuel from abroad. This is one way to re-launch the economy and to self-fund these types of projects. All we have to do is to say no to any type of additional power stations that is proposed for our area!
As a second measure, after reducing our consumption, the kind of renewable energy sources that we support will be based on small installations to supply the individual needs of buildings, as Beppe was saying earlier. We don’t need huge power stations, what we do need is a lot of citizens that self-produce enough energy for their own needs and input any excess energy they may have produced into the power grid. Another very important measure that will be introduced by the city councils is to propose that heating charges for apartment blocks be based on actual consumption rather than on a lump sum because, at the moment, these costs are charged out to the tenants based on the square meterage of their apartments, so there is no real incentive for them to fix their heating installations, whereas, if their charges was based on actual consumption, if any tenants renovate their apartments in such a way that they are more energy efficient, they will recover these costs over time by reducing their consumption of fossil fuels.
What we are talking about is transforming these savings into salaries for a lot of people with specific skills, which are now simply hanging around in a manner that is unacceptable from a civic duty point of view!
A final issue that is often discussed is that of bio-fuels and of agricultural production aimed specifically at producing bio-fuels, but no one talks about the fact that certain types of crops can be used to produce materials that could be used to reduce energy consumption rather than simply to provide energy. For example, there is significant proof that hemp can be used as insulation material for buildings or, just think that we currently have huge amounts of poor quality sheep’s wool that is deemed to be special waste and is simply taken to the rubbish dump, at a very high cost. This wool could be used as wall insulation in houses, thereby reducing consumption, reducing the amount of waste, reducing energy consumption, reducing environmental impact and creating some new jobs.
Point two is land use. We need to put a stop to the continuous expansion of urban plans. Not another square inch of our agricultural land must be lost to urban construction!
This is not intended to block employment or to block construction in any way, but rather to redirect our construction industry towards the renovation of existing buildings. For fifty years we have been building in a shameful manner and we now need to right the wrongs of the past 50 years. There is an enormous amount of work to be done and a measure such as this will force the people working in the construction industry to use their skills to fix the problems of the past, so that we build in a more environmentally friendly manner!
Still regarding land use, as Beppe has already said, we must rehabilitate that which we already have, rather than build something new, by demolishing where necessary and re-building in a more decent manner, however, we often underestimate the importance of reclaiming our urban parkland, which we do by creating a wooded avenue here and a little flower garden there. Instead, what we need to do is to bring back the right balance between the organic and the inorganic in our towns, because when we develop our green areas significantly and not just for the purposes of embellishment, we achieve 3 basic things: 1) the green areas absorb water and allow the level of the water table to rise. Waterproof surfaces instead force the water to runoff, while we continue to use more water and at the same time we increase the amount of surface area covered by waterproof tar and cement, thereby preventing the water from reaching the water table. 2) the green areas lower the temperature of the local microclimates in our towns, which are 3 or 4 degrees warmer than the surrounding microclimates. 3) urban forestation absorbs Co2 and therefore reduces the greenhouse effect and slow down the rate of climate change!
We need to realise the real importance of access to green areas in our towns. Another important issue is that of refuse, which will be the specific topic of a later address, but all I would like to say is that we need to start preparing those of us who will soon be sitting on the town councils to view the problem of refuse from a financial perspective, because this is the only way to approach this problem, also in terms of the environment. If the quantity of refuse is reduced and if we can reclaim the secondary raw materials contained in the refuse, then we will save on the costs of transporting the refuse to the dump. If I don’t have to dump one kilo of rubbish, either because I haven’t produced it or because I have recycled it, then I will be saving the disposal or incineration costs, but if I don’t take it to the dump at all, it probably means that I have sold it to someone else, who will extract the secondary raw materials from it.
For this very reason, differentiated refuse collection and the reduction in the quantity of refuse will enable the town councils to reduce the current refuse removal costs borne by the residents and indeed to convert these costs into revenues that will increase their budget, something that is essential in order to reverse the current suicidal trend of increasing the available funds by destroying the territory as they are doing at the moment.
As regards the technical issues, these will be discussed in a later address, but all I wanted to do was to highlight this very important issue regarding the method.
The next thing is that the municipalities should also consider are the economic – employment policies. We were talking about short production chains. We must draw attention to our local products. It is inconceivable that we transport products over such long distances because this has a certain environmental impact, which in turn increases the greenhouse effect and that takes jobs away from people because we then over-exploit workers in faraway lands, who don’t get paid a fair value and that provide us with products that are not good for us, or rather, products whose goodness is only as good as their low price!
We must increase the people’s purchases of organic products, products produced in an environmentally friendly manner and produced close by. Our town councils must manage the organic waste products from our school canteens in a responsible manner. There is stuff being wasted that brings tears to God’s eyes. The amount of stuff that is being thrown away is truly frightening and we cannot allow this to continue … a whole range of stuff is being thrown away untouched for some or other silly health reasons, while there are many, many needy people!
Anything that cannot be used for this purpose must be used to produce compost to enrich the soil with organic nutrients. We must give preference to our farmers and our small-scale local growers and appreciate the fact that they can sell their wares in town and have to overcome all of the bureaucratic requirements such as VAT registration numbers, etc., which are no great obstacle for the large companies but represent a real problem for the small, family-run firm.
You should know that this phenomenon of the farmer’s markets and short production chains is one that is gaining ground all over the place, in all of the more advanced industrialised countries. We need those of you who will be entering the institutions to be in favour of this type of process.
Two more things before I close: the first being the issue of traffic. We must prevent the historic centres of our towns being turned into parking areas, because doing so means increasing the traffic in our towns. We must prevent the creation of parking areas in office and factory buildings, because this encourages people to go to work by car rather than use the public transport, and we need to identify alternative means to ensure mobility. This is essential and I don’t know why the electric trams were taken out of circulation, because these are the epitome of environmentally friendly vehicles, also because they don’t have to carry the extra weight of on-board batteries but draws its power from an overhead line. These trams have been eliminated from our cities. We need to re-introduce them and, better still, they should be powered by a line passing under the road surface rather than an overhead line. Once these underground lines have been installed to power the trams, the same lines can also be used to power electric cars with no on-board battery packs. Therefore, the tram service can be augmented by introducing a fleet of “public cars”, which can be used by members of the public with “pay as you go” cards and then left at his/her destination, to then be used by other users.
Thus, if the electrical supply lines are laid under the asphalt we could power not only buses, but also a fleet of public cars for private use.
There are also other systems that we should consider, in particular, there is a group of people in Rimini that is busy experimenting with a system called “Jungo”, a sort of card-based hitch-hiking system, which could go a long way towards reducing traffic levels. This system is being tested in the Trento Province and we should investigate it more closely.
Finally there is the issue of water and the fact that it should be considered a public asset. I don’t believe we should really need to discuss this issue any further because it is such an elementary concept, however, that is not enough and a lot of work needs to be done in terms of repairing the aqueducts. We have some aqueducts that are losing as much as 40% of their water, so we are pumping water and losing it at the same time, so we need to do something to ensure that this water is not lost. This is a major undertaking.
I believe that companies that operate in a certain manner, like the Esco (Energy Service Company) companies, can assist communities with this type of initiative to repair the aqueducts and benefit from the water savings resulting from their intervention. I can think of a myriad … My hope is that the greatest possible number of people from our civic lists get voted onto the town councils, because it won’t take many, perhaps one or two town Councillors voting against a vacuum, could take the reigns of the situation and lead the way for others who have no ideas and who don’t know what to do, to follow!
Even if our success in the elections is limited, you must remember that each and every one of us that that is voted onto a Town Council is equivalent to 10 other councillors, because the important thing is to have clear ideas, to be able to make constructive proposals and to have the ability to convince others to follow. I also believe that our presence on the town councils will not only improve the quality of life in our communities, but also provide a very strong general impetus to help us get through this crisis in terms of increasing skilled employment, adding meaning to our work, improving the environment and thus convert the danger we are facing into a great opportunity for change. Thank you and goodbye!"

Hunters at sixteen years of age

Nature is worthless. We would rather have concrete and double-barrelled shotguns in the hands of sixteen year olds, with which they can exterminate the last few wild animals that are still around. LIPU has examined the Orsi Bill and compared it to the current animal protection legislation. Franco Orsi of the PDL should call himself "Big Hunter" or "Son of Boss(ol)i". What we should be doing is organising patrols to check what our parliamentarians are getting up to. Day by day these guys are trying to make our lives more miserable.
Here is one of many e-mails I have received regarding the Orsi Bill.

"The Bill proposed by Senator Franco Orsi: an endless list of errors.
Out of the Senate, in recent days, has come one of the most serious attacks on Nature, in other words on animal, on our Parks and even on our own safety: a bill that calls for the total liberalisation of hunting. Signed by Senator Franco Orsi.
Animals used as decoys, hunting in our Parks, reduction of protected areas, the slaughter of bears, wolves and stray cats and dogs and many more vile deeds.
Law 157/1992, the only existing law that directly protects the wild fauna in our Parks, is about to be torn to shreds.

Here is the list of horrors:
- Gone are the national and international interests as regards the protection of animals. Italy has an irrefutable heritage, namely our wild animals, which he is apparently no longer interested in protecting!
- Gone is the definition of super-protected species. In Italy, animals such as the wolf, the bear, the eagles, the flamingos, the swans, the storks and many others, will no longer enjoy the special protection envisaged by the European Union and international regulations.
- Hunting season open along the migration routes, something that will undoubtedly create a major disturbance and will encourage poaching in areas that are very important in terms of the difficult voyage and essential stopovers undertaken by the migratory birds.
- Total liberalisation of rules regarding live decoys! Are you aware of precisely what live decoys are? They are live birds held “prisoner” in the tiniest of cages for the purpose of attracting other birds. This terrible practice is already permitted by the current legislation, albeit with certain restrictions. But Senator Orsi now wants to liberalise this practice totally. It will be possible to keep and use an unlimited number of these decoys. Gone will be the identification rings for live decoys. All that will be required is a certificate. One certificate for all of these decoys! Hunters will be able to use any species of birds as decoys, whether legal prey or not, even bramblings, chaffinches and redbreasts.
- 700 thousand taxidermists. The hunters themselves will automatically become taxidermists, without even having to follow any procedures. Animals killed and stuffed without any rules. How many poachers do you think are going to spring into action to illegally capture and stuff wild animals?
- Scientific research eliminated. The State’s own scientific authority (the “Istituto Nazionale per la Fauna Selvatica” or National Institute for Wild Fauna – currently known as the “ISPRA”) is at risk of being totally replaced by regional institutes. These regional institutes will thus be issuing opinions on national and European Union matters. Plus the very real possibility of not being able to carry out studies or research, or establish uniform standards valid throughout the Country.
- Open hunting season in our Parks, for currently protected species. The incredible formulation of the Orsi Bill will make it possible to get exemptions (in other words, to get permission to hunt otherwise protected species), even in our Parks and other protected areas! Regions that protect more than 30% of their regional territory will be penalised! How offensive is that ruling! Those who protect too much “Nature” will be punished. As if creating a park, where people and animals can move about freely, were a punishable crime!
- Hunting licences issued to 16-year olds. Instead of teaching our kids respect, we now give them rifles!
- Freedom to exterminate wolves, bears, deer, stray cats and dogs, etcetera! An incredible provision that gives the mayor the power to authorise the slaughter and extermination of animals, in total contradiction of even the most basic of European standards. All that is needed is that there is be “problem animal”. A veritable naturalistic “Wild West”.
- Regional legislation permitting the hunting of protected species. Apparently, four European Union infractions and two four European Union infractions Constitutional Court rulings were not enough. Senator Orsi is about to give the Veneto and Lombardy regions, or rather the Ultras of the hunting world, a gift, namely a chance to hunt protected species, and to do so using regional legislation. I suppose we will be forced to pay the European Union fines too!
- Hunting in the snow and ice. Hunting will be permitted even in the snow and ice, in other words, those times of the year when the animals have a very hard time finding food, refuge and heat.
Let me go back to the issue of using birds as decoys! How medieval is that! Owlets tied by their claws and wings and used as bait!
- Less control over hunting. Fauna and flora guards will no longer be able to carry out inspections! In a Country that has one of the highest rates of poaching in the whole of Europe, what does Senator Orsi go and do? He reduces controls over hunting!
- The “Ente Nazionale Protezione Animali” (National Animal Protection Body) chucked off the National Technical Committee. The number of environmental associations represented on the committee of 157 are reduced from four to three. “ENPA”, the historical Italian animal association, is completely excluded.
Circulate this document and register on the wild animal protection lists on the various blogs and on Facebook.
Let’s stop Italy from resorting to this type of barbarity. Nature is our life."
The text of the Franco Orsi Bill (PDL) compared with that of the current law, drawn from the LIPU

website

1. Contact tthe members of the Senate Territorial and Environmental Committee that will be discussing the Orsi Bill.
2. Send an-email with your comments and/or suggestions regarding the bill directly to Franco Orsi
3. Join the group on Facebook

Photo of enricofede07x

This blog interviewed Lester Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute, author of the book entitled "Plan B 3.0" and winner of numerous environmental protection awards. The Washington Post has called him "one of the most influential opinion makers in the world ".
In terms of our Italy and its nuclear power stations, regasification terminals, incinerators, toxic waste disposal dumps, withdrawal of incentives in favour of alternative energy sources and backtracking on its Kyoto commitments, his words seem to be coming from a complete other world. Yet it is the same world in which we live. We only have one world and that has been sacrificed at the altar of consumerism and profit. The psycho(dwarf)peddler of consumerism and second hand television programmes exercises control over all the information media. This planet, however, couldn’t give a damn about the information media.
Download Plan B 3.0

Text:
"The most important thing that Governments have to do is to force the markets to tell the truth. The market is very good at doing certain things. One thing, however, that it does not do very well is to factor in the indirect costs (into the products - Ed). For example, when we buy a litre of fuel, we pay the cost incurred in extracting the crude oil, the transportation to the refinery, the refining of the crude oil to produce the fuel and the cost of transporting the fuel to the pump. We do not contribute anything towards the cost of treating the respiratory tract infections caused by breathing in polluted air, just as we don’t contribute to paying the cost of all the damage caused by acid rain and certainly not the cost of climate change.
When the British Government asked the former Chief Economist of the World Bank, Sir Nicholas Stern, to estimate the cost of the consequences of climate change, he highlighted the fact that climate change was the result of a monumental failure of the market. What he meant was that, having failed to factor the cost of climate change into the fuel price or the coal price, the next generation finds itself having to cope with the enormous costs of climate change, such as the melting of the world’s glaciers, the rising sea levels, the increasingly violent storms and so forth. What we have to do is to force the market to tell the truth. We must factor in the indirect costs. We now know what these are.
We must do this by reducing income tax and increasing the tax on CO2 emissions. This needs to be done progressively, say over a period of 10-12 years, so that the people will know what to expect and will plan their choices accordingly. Others prefer the carbon dioxide market approach, which sets a ceiling on emissions and make the right to pollute something that is negotiable.
That is precisely what Europe has attempted to do, but this approach has not proved to be particularly effective. Most economists prefer the route of tax rate re-organisation. This is the most effective way of overhauling the economy and forcing the market to tell the truth regarding environmental issues. In my travels around the world, I am often asked the question: what can I do, what must I do? I think people expect me to say: recycle your newspaper, or replace you light globes with more energy efficient ones.
These are certainly important actions, however, what we have to address is the need to overhaul the entire economic system. We need to force the market to tell the truth regarding environmental issues, and this involves becoming politically active.
For decades now, we environmentalists have been talking about saving the planet. Now we must talk about saving civilisation itself.
The reason for this is that the increasing burden of peaking petroleum production, the increase in crude oil prices, scarcity of food, scarcity of water and all of the problems linked to climate change are leading an increasing number of failing governments becoming fearful, thereby driving the world towards a situation where the world itself could become uncontrollable. Saving civilisation is not a spectator sport. We cannot afford to simply sit back and wait for someone else to do something on our behalf. We all have our own interests on the line. We all have children and grandchildren and, therefore, we must think about what we need to do and how quickly we need to do it in order to save our civilisation.
For a long time now we have been talking about sustainable development. The only alternative to sustainable development is unsustainable development, in other words economic decline and failure. If we take the time to look back at earlier civilisations, we can identify all of the environmental problems that they were unable to resolve. For the Sumerians, the main problem was the increase in the salinity of the soil. They attempted to overcome the problem by switching from the planting of wheat to the planting of barley. However, the level of salinity continued to increase, resulting in the disappearance of the barley fields and subsequently in the disappearance of the civilisation itself. In the case of the Mayans, the problem was the soil erosion resulting from deforestation and excessive agricultural activity. Together with the decline of the food production system came the decline in the Mayan civilisation. Now the entire area has reverted to jungle. The lands occupied by the Sumerians have since become deserts. We know from experience that if any civilisation is unable to manage their environmental problems, these problems will eventually result in the decline of the civilisation itself.
Beppe, I would like to thank you for your interest and your support on environmental issues. I would like to remind you about the time, in early 2006 when Plan B 2.0 was released, when we posted an extract from the book on your blog, amounting to a few hundred words. That posting led to so many hits on our site that our server gave up the ghost and we were obliged to replace it with another server that was ten times as powerful. It was absolutely extraordinary to note that all of this began with a simple posting on a single blog outside of the United States. Subsequently we began to do some research and discovered that your blog is one of the most powerful blogs anywhere in the world. The very idea that one individual can compete with the major-league media companies such as the BBC and CNN is way beyond anyone’s wildest imagination. I think that your efforts to fully utilise this extraordinary information medium are admirable and we are pleased to be able to work with you.
I believe that together we could truly turn things around. But we don’t have much time. We must act quickly and get everyone involved!
Congratulations on what you are doing. Thank you very much!" Lester Brown, author of Plan B 3.0

Biowashball
Click on the image


In the programme “Mi manda Rai3” that was devoted to Biowashball what was missing was the two million people who have used it and value it.
They got the RAI, the magazine called “il Salvagente with the Co-op label (the Co-op that loves detergents) and some people because they were signed up to a Beppe Grillo Meetup who were against the product (guess why they were invited – and only them).
Missing from the studio was the housewife from Voghera, the one who knows what washing is and who can provide a professional opinion on the Biowashball because she has used it.
If a product doesn’t do what it says it does and they want money in exchange, that’s called fraud. The company that distributes the product worldwide, has no court action against it and in no State where Biowashball is sold has the product been withdrawn.
I have said many times that before giving an opinion it’s necessary to get information and to check it. However I haven’t said that to do that, you have to watch the TV or read the newspapers financed by the State.
I have tried it. My family has been using Biowashball for two months and even the families of some of my friends. For us it works. Before giving your opinion, I advise you to use it, perhaps on loan from a friend. On the Internet there are hundreds of statements from satisfied Italian users.
After this reaction from the media I believe that it is time to start a campaign against detergents, one of the tools used to destroy the planet, used often unnecessarily and nearly always excessively. A difficult battle because they have the media (financed with their advertising) as allies.
They will never give up, (but is it in their interests?) neither will we.

(*) 800,000 Biowashball in Europe, Switzerland, France, Germany, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Italy …. 250,000 in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand. 950,000 in Asia : Korea, Singapore, Japan, Vietnam, ... 50,000 in the USA in the first month after the launch.

PS. I am not paid to advertise Biowashball (read the letter), anyone who says otherwise is lying knowing that they are lying. They can expect a court action for defamation. money that I get will go to charity.
PPS. The symbol for the Civic Lists will be published tomorrow.

Banner confiscated in Rome


Italy was the Land of Persimmons, then of Indian Fig Opuntia, now of fires, set in the whole of Campania to destroy toxic waste. Dioxin is oxygen for politics. I have no more news of the trial of 'O Governatore, whose real name is Antonio Bassolino. Is it still going on while awaiting the time out for the Statute of limitations? Will someone let me know.

”Dear Beppe,
We are young people committed at the coal face for an environmental drama that finds ample reflections even in the pages of V. The final chapter of the book is dedicated to that: “The Land of Fires”. Just as in the rest of the country, here the serious problems are ignored by the official media. So, while the country is chasing after the scurrilous choices in relation to the environment, by the one government and by the other one, and everyone is getting worried about incinerators,… in the meantime, tons and tons of specialist refuse (*) is still being poured out onto the streets in the outskirts of Naples and Caserta. The whole lot is set fire to, especially at night. Within site of everyone including the Italian Army.
The Refuse Emergency is transformed into the single and “simple” issue of urban refuse. With risks and sacrifices, putting at risk personal safety for about six months, we have denounced with videos and photographs a scandal that has been going ahead undisturbed for years, as can be seen on the website www.laterradeifuochi.it. It seems like a battle field. Great columns of dense black fumes are rising from the ground. It brings back memories of Kuwait when the oil fields were burning.
Some TV channels have started to take note of the issue, but that is not enough. A real vast area (the province between Naples and Caserta in particular the urban areas of Scampia, Ponticelli and those adjacent to the towns in the province of North Naples like Giugliano, Qualiano, Villaricca, Mugnano, Melito, Arzano, Casandrino, Casoria, Caivano, Grumo Nevano, Acerra, Nola, Marigliano, and Pomigliano; on the Caserta side there are the towns of Parete, Casapesenna, Villa Literno, Santa Maria Capua Vetere, Casal di Principe, Aversa, Lusciano, Marcianise, Teverola, Trentola, Frignano, and Casaluce) is still transforming itself into an immense incinerator with cells dotted around” There intensity increases as the sun goes down and they burn the whole night long. The fires are interminable even during the day. But what happens at night is indescribable. The air pongs like the whole Earth is in putrefaction. There are hundreds of families obliged to close themselves indoors. The whole thing is documented from satellites. It’s enough to take a tour of our site on Google Maps. We have created a map with a census of the locations. Among the specialist refuse there is glue, solvents and industrial paints, off cuts from manufacturing processes. From textiles to manufacturing of footwear, going on to mechanical, bodywork and thermo-hydraulics. From electric wires to the shells of white goods. The killer Eternit, full of asbestos is burning! What is externally visible is that old tires are burning. In other countries they are completely recycled. Here they are burned to enrich criminals who poison our lives. From the evidence collected, we have reached the conclusion that the fires are done because they feed the illegal market for the disposal of special refuse. And at the same time the illegal recovery of certain materials, form “precious” copper to common metals like iron and steel.
Health, Agriculture, the image, the Economy and the Development of Campania are compromised beyond every limit. As well as the holes for burying dangerous refuse, there are above all the FIRES. In Marcianise some independent doctors are engaged in clinical research that is showing that mothers are advised to reduce breast feeding. Because of too much dioxin in their milk. Raffaele Del Giudice, protagonist of “Biutiful Cauntri” and the leader of Campania’s Legambiente, has declared that the environmental strata have all been compromised. Important biological indicators are beyond every possible tolerance limit. Has anyone ever asked the reason for all the miscarriages? And the male infertility, the thyroid illnesses, the child allergies and the problems to the respiratory system? When the doctors examine us, they can say where we come from just by the types of pathology that we have. And yet no one is talking about this! Why is health spending in Campania so high? Is it all bad management and theft, or is it that we are really sick? How many more deaths do we have to weep over? With a tiny fire everything is contaminated. The air, the water table and enormous sections of the surface. Even at a distance of kilometers. For the mozzarella with dioxin, they have examined the buffalos. And the population?
Those responsible are not people. Like the medieval plague-spreaders, these mad assassins disseminate the plague and poisons in a subtle and silent way through the whole of the population. To those who in critical moments have accused the people of Campania of being absent, we respond with the institutions. Where were the institutions and where are they right now? The phenomenon has been going on for many years. It has been written in the reports of Ecomafia, and of Legambiente. Now, however, thanks to “Gomorra” it’s as though everyone has read the reports. Help us to spread the word about the website www.laterradeifuochi.it. Everyone is called to take care of their own land with a civic action of video-denouncing environmental scandals. A mobile phone is enough. Given that with a single action there is an attack on the health of millions of people, we want really severe penalties for the environmental criminals.
We are a group of young dreamers who want to believe in the institutions. These, however, do everything to discourage us. We have sent appeals to the highest positions in the State. From the President of the Republic, the Honourable Giorgio Napolitano to the current president of the Council, the Honourable Cavaliere Silvio Berlusconi.
Anyway, in recent days, with the statements of esteem and solidarity that Roberto Saviano is receiving from the whole world of politics, here at Gomorra, the scandal continues…” Angelo Ferrillo – president of Associazione La Terra dei Fuochi - www.laterradeifuochi.it


(*) The specialist refuse is that derived from: agricultural activity – construction activity, demolition and excavation – industrial work, artisans, business – service activity, recovery and disposal of refuse – health service activity – obsolete machinery and vehicles and engines that have been scrapped. (art. n° 7 D. Lgs. 22/97)"

The story of stuff


Good news: In Modugno, near Bari, Marcegaglia’s incinerator has been sequestered thanks in part to a declaration by the young people of the Bari 2 Meetup. It is a great victory for the health of the people of Apulia. A defeat for the politicians and the Confindustria people who are aided by the State.
In relation to the environment each one has the Ministers they deserve, but we have exaggerated. Two declarations that would freeze Dracula’s blood:
- Stefania Prestigiacomo, minister of the Environment: We are really doing badly on Kyoto. We have a growth trend in emissions of 13% instead of a decrease of 6.5% but even here… does it make sense that it is we who take on the job of the pollution of the world when to wriggle out of Kyoto are the countries like the United States…?”
Renato Brunetta, minister for the Public Administration and for Innovation, on the reduction of polluting emissions: Europe has little to punish us for because 20-20-20 [20% more in energy efficiency, 20% less in polluting emissions and 20% of energy sourced from renewable sources by 2020, editor] is madness. For the companies and for the country… It is madness above all for a manufacturing country like Italy that has an intensity and a density of companies greater than the European average because our country would have disadvantages.” But he added reassuringly: “We want a clean environment. We want controls of an environmental type that do not kill our companies and our families.”
Give me a bucket so that I can vomit….

"Ciao Beppe,
I am Lello Ciampolillo of the Bari 2 Meetup. I wanted to let you know that in a sea of ‘rubbish’ news today we have a positive item. The magistracy works. Politicians no.
On 22/09/08 Dr. Francesco Bretone prosecutor at the Procura of Bari, has sequestered the building site for the construction of the incinerator of Eco Energia Srl (Marcegaglia group) at Modugno (BA) and he has placed 4 people under investigation; one of these is a director of the Ecology Section of the Region of Apulia. The sequestration has recently been confirmed by the Magistrate for the preliminary investigations. The investigations have been carried out partly as a result of two denunciations presented by the Bari 2 Meetup with the help of the lawyer Gaetano Filograno. The declarations provide evidence of the dangerousness of the establishments between Bari and Modugno of a turbo gas electricity generating station and the incinerator, inserted in an environment that is already heavily polluted by the industrial zone just by the city of Bari, as well as the presence of an Enel electricity generating station inside the city, recently converted from combustion oil to gas about whose legitimacy our Meetup is carrying out technical and judicial investigations to be submitted to the relevant authorities.

...

They will never give up, and neither will we.” Lello Ciampolillo organizer of Bari 2 Meetup

Brother Bear, Sister Moon, Tormentor man. Matrix’s agent Smith described man as a virus. He knew what he was talking about. We are the only species that destroys the environment in which we live, that kills for fun, that tortures living beings for filthy lucre. The Moon Bears are immobilized in a tiny cage for twenty years, the duration of their lives. Every day, twice a day, bile is extracted from their flesh for medicine, drinks and shampoos. The pain that they suffer is so great that the bears try to commit suicide. To stop them from doing that, their claws are pulled out and their teeth are sawn off. 10,000 Moon Bears are tortured in China, in Korea and in Vietnam. I have seen a whole film sequence about the torture and I felt ill, I wanted to turn off the PC, but I got right to the bitter end. At least this I owed to Brother Bear.
Jill Robinson, an English lady, is dedicating her life to the Moon Bears with the organization AAF. Let us help her by means of her website. In the next few days I will interview Jill for the blog, to find out about the products that contain the bile and the addresses of the places where the torture takes place. I will publish this and I will adopt a Moon Bear as a mascot for the blog. Read the letter from Carmen of AAF.

“Have you ever heard of “bile farms” in China, Korea and Vietnam and of the atrocities practiced on the Moon Bears? These marvelous animals, once they have been captured with traps that often cause terrible mutilation, are imprisoned and tortured for a practice that is so cruel that it has few comparisons. They are prisoners in tiny cages, no bigger than their bodies, cages that prevent any type of movement, that deform their bones and atrophy the limbs. About 10,000 bears are “milked” twice a day for the really painful extraction of their bile by means of rudimentary metal catheters inserted into their gall bladder. In ancient times, the bear was killed and its bile was used in traditional Chinese medicines. In the 1970 the bear, considered a protected species because it was becoming extinct, was imprisoned for life giving an infinitely superior production of bile. Today its bile can be completely substituted with herbal alternatives and more economic and more effective synthetic products. The market has an excess supply and to reduce the stocks, the producers also use it for the production of drinks and shampoos! These creatures go through indescribable suffering. Their limbs become atrophied a bit at a time until they have absolute immobility and with an agony that can last 20 years, they suffer this torture every day, until they die from tumours or chronic infections produced by the catheters that are inserted into their flesh. Nothing else is done for them: the infections, the psychological suffering, the malformation of the bones caused by the pressure of the bars, the pressure sores, the malnutrition kills them more rapidly. But most of these animals, very resistant, survive this unthinkable torture for decades. Many bears would like to put an end to their atrocious suffering by committing suicide, but they are prevented from doing this, by having their teeth sawn off, by having their claws pulled, leaving them only the possibility to be maddened for life.
The saving of the bears began in 1993 when a courageous English woman called Jill Robinson went to visit one of these places. In 1998, AAF-ANIMALS ASIA FOUNDATION was created to put an end to this cruel practice and1999 saw the opening of a centre for the recovery of bears that have been saved where the AAF staff gives these martyred animals the joy to live once more. Today there have been more than 280 bears that have been freed. The knowledge of the torture that the Moon Bears have had to undergo is moving. It provokes indignation and nudges consciences. With her association, Jill is today negotiating with the Chinese government to get the maximum result: the definitive closure of every individual bile farm. Jill and AAF can only fight their battles thanks to the donations that come from every part of the world.” Carmen
AAF – UK Tel.+44-1579-347148, ITALY Support Group - Tel. +39-010-2541998

If you see a honeybee that is busy dying, you should be very concerned indeed. Albert Einstein once said that: “Were all the honeybees to disappear, man would only have four years left to live”.
Honeybees play a pivotal role in the production of honey, pears, apples, tomatoes, clover, medicinal herbs, milk and meat. They transport the pollen and transform the world around us into food. The honeybee, which is a bio-indicator of environmental health, is a species that is currently at risk. If the honeybee is at risk today, tomorrow it will be our turn. In an article entitled “Honeybee deaths reaching crisis point”, The Guardian reports that fully one third of the total of 240,000 British beehives actually died off during the past winter and spring. British Minister Rooker has stated that if nothing is done to remedy the situation, there will no longer be a single honeybee left on the island within the next ten years. Honeybees contribute some 165 million pounds sterling per year to the British economy through the production of fruit and vegetables. That is, of course, over and above the honey that they produce. The Honey Association predicts that no more locally produced honey will be available in Great Britain by Christmas. New stocks will only become available during the summer of 2009.
This, however, is a worldwide crisis. The world’s largest producer of honey is Argentina, where the 75,000 tons produced annually has now dropped by 27%. In the United States (25% fewer beehives in 2008) and the rest of the world, the honeybees are deserting us. In Italy it has been a disaster. Fifty percent of our honeybees died and 200,000 beehives were lost in 2007, resulting in a 250 million Euro loss for the agricultural sector. However, it would seem that this is not a national priority. Apparently, the real priorities are the deployment of soldiers on our streets, gagging the Justice System by means of the separation of duties, gathering the fingerprints of gypsy children, the Alfano Bill to ensure the impunity of the Top Four Gang and Impregilo’s incinerators. These are the real priorities!
And why are the honeybees dying you may ask? They are dying because of environment degradation, climate change, Varoa (a type of mite), the conversion of grazing land into fields of Soya beans used in the production of bio fuels, the indiscriminate use of pesticides and the pollution of our water courses. The beehives are being decimated by a phenomenon known as CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder), and all because mankind is busy poisoning our planet.
There is something that we can do immediately as far as Italy is concerned. We can prohibit the use of nicotine-based pesticides. They have already done so in France. Nicotine has a disastrous effect on honeybees. It makes them lose their sense of direction, they are then unable to find their hives and so they die.
In addition to putting the honeybees at risk, those producing nicotine-based pesticides are also threatening our survival. Please give me a hand by adding your comments to this information posting regarding the manufacturers and users of these pesticides and the consequences for the environment.
Anyone who poisons a honeybee is also poisoning you.

The polar bears are contaminated. They are becoming yellow. The seals and the penguins can see them from a distance and flee. The yellow gold against the snow is better than a light-reflector. At the Pole, the bears are getting thinner and they let themselves float off on blocks of ice riding on the currents. The icebergs are melting, but the whole planet is focusing its attention on the Olympics. Our civilisation and the icebergs are at risk of finishing at the same moment.
The glaciers of the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau are melting at a rate of 7% a year. By the year 2060 they could disappear, but already the flow that they pour into the Yellow River and the Yangtze has gone down, as has the harvest of rice and of grain.
The Gangotri Glacier could disappear in twenty years together with the Ganges that could be transformed into a little seasonal river.
The ice of the Himalayas is being transformed into rivers, the rivers into food for India and China, two over-populated nations. A few extra billion people could die of hunger, but in Beijing the nations of the world are thinking about archery and synchronized swimming.
In its own way, the human race is great, it manages to dance on the edge of a volcano during a sea-quake while an asteroid is striking the Earth.
When the glaciers of the North Pole are completely melted, and that will happen soon, perhaps in less than 10 years, the level of the sea will rise by FIVE metres. The icebergs of Greenland will melt straight away after that and the level of the sea will rise by a further SEVEN metres.
Any human being living in a place lower than TWELVE metres above sea level should move house. A research study by the International Institute for Environment and Development has estimated that the house moving will involve 600 million people.
Humans will become yellow like the bears. They will be dragged out into the oceans like the bears. Not on blocks of ice. Which will no longer exist. But on blocks of shit.

"Brescia displays a number of disconcerting similarities to Campania. The milk originating from companies located in the vicinity of the city have recently been found to contain higher than normal dioxin levels. We also encountered an extremely high incidence of liver tumours.
The National Health tumours register, however, reassuringly but without any verifiable data, puts this down to a high incidence of hepatitis and alcohol abuse (Giornale di Brescia, 10 November 2007). It must be pointed out that Eng. Renzo Capra, Chairman of Asm, is also a member of the ASL Tumours Register Scientific Committee, which he also funds.
It is maintained that there is an annual saving of 470 thousand tons of CO2 emissions, however, what is not being said is that the comparison is being made to the waste disposal dumps, and not to recycling, which enables CO2 emission reductions of three times this amount (AEA Technology. Waste management options and climate change, European Commission, 2001).
In Brescia they pretend to be practicing differentiated waste collection. However, this is annulled by the continuous increase in the amount of waste being produced, including the special waste. In the 10 years since the incinerator was commissioned, the amount of differentiated waste to be disposed of has remained at a level of 1,1 Kg/day/per capita, precisely the same as in Campania and 5-6 times as much as the undifferentiated waste, which is collected door-to-door, at a specific fee (e.g.: Consorzio Priula Treviso). After all, the incinerator requires a certain of waste, and Asm has managed to perform a “miracle” by maintaining the same quantities for a period of 10 years!
In order to inflate Asm results, it provides figures in kilowatt-hours (570 million), pretending not to know that the standard unit of measurement, outside of private dwellings, is in fact the gigawatthour (million KWh) or the terawatthour (billion KWh). If the truth were told, the Brescia plant (800,000 tons/year) has a capacity equivalent to one tenth of that of a normal turbo gas power station. The plant cost per MW supplied is 5-6 times higher than that of a turbo gas power station, and the yield is approximately 20% of the calorific potential of the waste, as against the 55% of a turbo gas power station. The minimal amount of energy recovered is negated by the wastage of other valuable materials (Each year, 5-6 thousand tons of iron, 6 thousand tons of aluminium and hundreds of tons of copper exit the plant together with the ash in the case of Brescia). In conclusion then, the contribution made by Lombardy’s incinerators, 13 plants, to electricity production in the area is equivalent to 2% of the total!
This is a wastage plant, and an unprofitable one at that, which is only able to continue its operating thanks to the scandalous funding, via the Cip6 (see the posting), paid to the Brescia incinerator, namely, more than 60 million Euro per year, for 8 years, or double the actual investment for the plant itself!
In 2006, the Asm incinerator was proclaimed "world champion ", having won the "Wtert 2006 Industry Award". Except for the fact that the Award Body, namely Columbia University’s Wtert, is sponsored, inter alia, by Martin GmbH, Germany, the manufacturer of the very same Asm plant." Marino Ruzzenenti, www.ambientebrescia.it

Paul Connett, Professor of Environmental Chemistry at St Lawrence University of New York talks about incinerators and the strategy of “zero refuse” .

Click to see the video


Foreign journalists have toured Campania. A Rubbish Tour. They couldn’t believe their eyes. But the readers will believe their articles. Campania is like Seveso. Products of the earth contaminated like those at Chernobyl. Bye bye tourism. Bye bye agricultural production. Bye bye everything except an increase in cancers. Those who are responsible for a disaster that is worse than an earthquake don’t want to be made to budge from their armchairs of power. Creating confusion are the Bassolino-Jervolino pair, both of them in the 45 wise people of the Democratic Party. In Capri ‘s square, the Neapolitan President Napolitano, party companion of Bassolino said he was alarmed.
Those who’ll land up in prison are those who protest. Those who are responsible will stay free and be paid by us.

V2-day, for freedom of information:
1. Put your photos on www.flickr.com with the tag V2-day
2. Put your videos on www.youtube.com with the tag V2-day
.

Click to see V2-video

It is difficult to explain precisely what is going on in the Campania region. When the responsibility lies simultaneously in the hands of politicians, entrepreneurs, organised crime and certain citizens, where does one begin?
A fish always starts smelling from the head-side.
Bassolino, “diessino-diossino” (Ds member and dioxin producer) was Mayor of Naples in 1993 and was re-elected in 1997. In the year 2000 he became Regional Premier of Campania, and was re-elected in 2006. Rosa Russo Jervolino, elected as Mayor of Naples in 2001, was re-elected in 2006.
Bassolino-Jervolino would appear to be a tandem brand, in that, when one of them leaves the Municipal Council, the other takes his place, while the former moves up to the Regional Council.
My dear residents of Campania, stop the tandem, perhaps then things will change.


I suspect that the whole palaver surrounding the refuse in Campania is merely a pretext for relaunching the incinerators. Those that Bersanetor and D’Alema sauvely call thermo-enhancers and that no one else in Europe is building any longer.
I have written about the reasons for a no vote, as well as what the alternatives are.
Print and circulate the pdf file.


Incinerators, why not?
1 – Incinerating refuse converts it into toxic nanoparticles and dioxins
2 – Incineration requires substances such as water, lime and bicarbonate, which increase the initial mass of the refuse
3 – One ton of refuse produces one ton of fumes and 300kg of solid ash, as well as certain other substances
- by law, solid ash must be disposed of at a waste disposal dump for hazardous toxic waste, a waste product that is infinitely more hazardous than that contained in the old waste disposal dumps
- the fumes contain 30kg of cancerogenous fly ash and 25kg of chalk
- incineration produces 650kg of polluted water requiring purification
4 – If inhaled into the lungs, the microscopic dust particles (2pm to 0,1pm) resulting from incineration will reach the bloodstream within 60 seconds, and all the other organs within 60 minutes
5 – The pathologies resulting from the inhalation include: cancer, foetal malformation, Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer Syndrome, heart attacks and strokes. This has been proven by thousands of scientific studies
6 – The incinerators, also called thermo enhancers, were financed by means of a 7% levy on all Enel utility accounts, by linking them to renewable energy sources, together with waste products from the petrol-from-coal refineries. Without this tax the incinerators would not be economically viable. Provision was made for incinerators in the last Budget, but only for those already built.
7 – There are currently 51 incinerators in Italy and it would be interesting to set up metering stations to analyse the quantities of microscopic dust particles in the vicinity of each incinerator, and to monitor the rate of derived illnesses in the areas over the long-term.
8 – The only beneficiaries of the incineration of refuse are the petroleum magnates, incinerator constructors and the parties openly being financed by these companies.


What to do with the refuse.
1 – Reduce the amount of refuse produced (for example, Berlin has managed to reduce the quantity of refuse produced by 5% in a period of only six months)
2 – Door-to-door differentiated waste collection with detailed billing tariffs
3 – Recycling of all differentiated waste collected
4 – Any refuse remaining after the implementation of the first three points should be sent to specialist plants for mechanical selection of the remaining undifferentiated waste. Anything that is not recyclable can be treated in biological drying plants, without burning it
5 – Economically speaking, where there is a differentiated refuse collection system in operation, it is no longer viable to burn refuse, because:
- any wood can be sold on to chipboard manufacturing companies
- recycling paper produces more energy than that produced by burning it
- recycling plastic makes financial sense. 2/3kg of petroleum is required in order to produce one kg of plastic
6 – Differentiated refuse collection can make up as much as 70% of all refuse produced and the remaining 30% can be further reduced to 15-20% by means of biological drying. This quantity is less than, or the same as the amount of waste products from the incinerators. However, the former are inert, non-toxic products requiring lower management costs and fewer environmental and health implications.


If the waste disposal sector was not legally controlled by privately held monopolies financed with public funds, but instead there was some real market liberalisation, competition between the companies would affect the level of recycling, and incineration would become a thing of the past.

figure from the Financial Times

The European Commission has proposed a reduction in vehicle CO2 emissions by 2012. The emission limit would be an average of 130 grams per kilometre instead of the current average of 160. The manufacturers that exceed this limit will be obliged to pay 20 Euro per gram in excess of the set limit, a fine that will go up to 95 Euro per gram by 2016.
The 19% cut in the level of poisons is deemed to be “a very disappointing proposal” by Sergio Marchionne, and inadequate by the environmentalists. The heavier a vehicle is, the more it pollutes. An SUV poisons better than a Fiat five hundred. The 120 grams/km limit is far more difficult for larger-engined vehicle to achieve. The list of current lung killers is led by Porsche, with around 255 grams/km, followed by Subaru, Daimler Chrysler, BMW, Mazda and Mitsubishi.
Green Germany’s Angela Merkel, having viewed the results, instead of taking issue with her Country’s vehicle manufacturers, stated that this was an attempt to: “implement an industrial policy at the expense of the German motor manufacturers. Then, without even blushing, she proceeded to add that: “It is unacceptable that nothing will need to be done in terms of half of all the French cars, while 90% of German cars will be affected, this is an imbalance that needs to be addressed”. Perhaps Merkel would prefer it if all cars polluted the atmosphere as much as Porsche does.
The Italian National Automobile Trade Fair Association, ANFIA, states that the EU is: “heavily penalising small engined cars that are already virtuous as regards emissions”.
The reactions from the CO2 oilers, both large and small, are all the same. Lungs do not enter into the equation as regards their production parameters.
Who ultimately pays for the pollution? The national healthcare system does. The cost of hospital admissions for the treatment of lung ailments, including tumours, is borne by the State. What does vehicle pollution cost us? Even the cyclist pays part of the cost of the SUV when he/she purchases antibiotics.
I propose that a health tax be levied on motorists at the source. The more the vehicle pollutes, the more the motorist pays. Furthermore, SUV drivers should be obliged to pay a monthly visit to the terminal illness wards where people with lung tumours are treated.
Town mayors can go one better than the EU. Hybrid fuel taxis, electric buses and cycle paths. Let them deny access to their city for the worst polluting cars. The owners and their families can equally breathe in as much CO2 as they wish, right in the comfort of their own garages at home.

Click here to watch the video

Once upon a time Baby Jesus was found in the feeding trough of a barn. But times have changed and these days, on Christmas Day, they put the children in the graders in order to protect the families’ land and accompaniment for their bread.
500 residents of Sant’Andrea del Pizzone are today awaiting a joint charge by the police and the army. They want to “move” these people in order to make room for the umpteenth waste disposal dump needed to cope with the umpteenth emergency. The residents have not been consulted, the rubbish is not theirs and the local mayors have been the beneficiaries of particularly close scrutiny.
Those responsible for the waste disposal emergency in the Campania region, instead, are still there. They are untouchable, just like the rotten institutions that they represent. These people are the real rubbish of what was once “Campania Felix”.
This blog is spending Christmas with the residents of Sant’Andrea.


“Hi Beppe,
I wanted to tell you about the absurd situation that has arisen in our area in the past few days. I live in S.Andrea del Pizzone, a hamlet of the Municipality of Francolise (Caserta). The current extraordinary commissioner for the waste disposal emergency, Pansa, has designated the “Carabottoli” site, which falls within the municipal boundary of the Carinola district but is, in fact, not very far from our area, as the preferred storage site for the so-called ecocrap. At present, we are in the dark as to what selection criteria were adopted by the prefect, but this decision has unleashed a demonstration involving not only the residents of our municipality, but also residents of adjacent districts. Our protest is not simply born of a refusal to accept other people’s rubbish, but also from the fact that over 90% of the local economy is based on agriculture. Ours is the place of origin of Buffalo Mozzarella, which is famous worldwide and enjoys the D.O.P. and D.O.C. quality certifications, as do numerous other local products. I sincerely doubt whether Commissioner Pansa has ever tasted a good mozzarella, which makes his assessment criteria even more questionable. In actual fact, the area chosen lies at the very epicentre of the production zone. The residents’ occupation of the site in order to deny access to the graders has already resulted in an initial confrontation with the forces of law and order. It is important to note with what haste (unlike in other cases..) the police and the army intervened in an attempt to disperse these people, resorting to the use graders.
Their attempts were blocked when a number of mothers placed their children in the path of the graders. Also involved in this confrontation were the municipal mayors, who were not exactly treated with due respect, given the positions they hold. The site is currently being watched over, night and day, by a group of more than 500 people who, whilst awaiting the outcome of a meeting between the committees and the commissioner, are expecting another charge to take place, who knows when, perhaps on Christmas day?.” Salvatore P.

Dolphins on the beach at Cape Verde

Today I am going to tell you a modern fairy tale, in the words of a girl from Cape Verde.
The wolf is long gone, only to be replaced by the American naval bases with their nuclear-powered submarines. And now, the part of Little Red Riding Hood is not being played by Putin but, in this case, by the dolphins and those unfortunate ones that are obliged to host the armaments of the American Dream.
They take the medicines out of their mouths and have no public health system, all in order to be able to give us arms.

"Hello Beppe,
My girlfriend was born in Cape Verde, a beautiful archipelago of islands, which was still completely uncontaminated, that is until just a few years ago. Now read what has happened there:

- Terrible news. I was phoned on Sunday morning at about 4 am and informed about what was happening. During the night, perhaps around 1am, first 10, then 100 and then 300 dolphins landed up beached about 9 km away from my home, at Morro de Areia near Chave.
At 6 am, together with a large group made up of Cape Verde locals and foreigners, we went along in order to try to save them. However, after having pushed about forty of them back into the water and kept them at bay for some time, they came back to shore. We continued in our attempts for no less than 9 hours, but to no avail, because they continued coming back to shore, apparently wanting to die. I don’t know if this is in fact so, but this is most certainly the impression we got.
What a tragedy it was, seeing these dolphins, with tears in their eyes, simply asking to be left alone to die. They all died, notwithstanding all of our efforts, and there was little else left to do but to bury them.
Again on Monday, another 70 beached dolphins, this time near Ribeira, between our house and Chave, right in front of where they are busy building the Riu. The dolphins were returned to the water with the help of some of the workers and, after numerous attempts, they proceeded to return to deeper waters, and only five of them died.
The theories put forward on Sunday tended to lay the blame for this tragedy on the presence of ships or submarines in the area, whose sonar signals either caused the dolphins to become disoriented, frightened or drove them insane.
We now know that, once again, man is the responsible party. This is, in fact, confirmed by the presence of an American nuclear-powered submarine, which docked at Sao Vincente after having navigated between the islands.
It was shown on the television, in the roadstead where the future American naval base is due to be built. The submarine was navigating in the area, sometime between the Saturday and Sunday on which the phenomenon occurred. During the night, between the Saturday and the Sunday, a group of no less than 265 dolphins beached themselves.
The worst part is that there are another 400 dolphins on their way here, whose fate seems to be sealed, something that we sincerely hope can be avoided. We are told by the Cape Verde radio service and thereafter by the Harbour Authority that these dolphins are currently zigzagging toward us.
Herewith a hug and a hope that the desert and the sea will be with us! "A girl from Cape Verde”.

Ps: MicroMega, sponsored by the Catanzaro Province and scheduled to take place in Catanzaro tomorrow, 1st December 2007, at the Provincial Council Building (Luigi Rossi square). There will be a debate on the subject of: "The law and the power of the powerless ". Speakers will include: Luigi De Magistris, Marco Travaglio, Carlo Vulpio, Antonio Massari, Raffaello Magi, Marco Del Gaudio, Melania Salazar and Domenico Ciruzzi. Moderator: Emilio Carnevali.

photo: KevThaBass

Fire in the De Longhi factory at Treviso last April.

“There are no reasons to believe that there is a risk connected to dioxin in the fire at the De Longhi company. The company is not among those at risk, because of the sector where the fire took place, and also for the type of material that caught fire. It’s not considered that there are consequences for the health of citizens.
The hydrochloric acid and the PAH present in the plume of smoke produced are not in such concentrations that create problems to the citizens.” Arpav, Agenzia Regionale per la Prevenzione e Protezione Ambientale del Veneto, 18 April 2007.

“In the air samples taken a few hours after the fire started, there were 270 pico grammes of dioxin per cubic metre compared to a threshold of 100.” from La Stampa 20 April 2007

“After an intense and accurate series of analysis conducted systematically it has been found that all the values are within the established limits. The environmental analysis carried out by the Chelab laboratory both inside the offices and in the courtyards of the building have not discovered any trace of toxic agents.” De Longhi, 24 April 2007.

“Note that 70% of the De Longhi products are plastic and when they catch fire they produce dioxin.” Paolo Barbiero, Cgil Treviso, April 2007

“I am referring to the De Longhi fire that happened 18 April at 1:00pm in Treviso. My daughter and two girls aged four and one, live 10 Kilometres from Treviso.
That day at 3:30 pm she was out for a walk with the one year old . The windows were wide open, the washing was hanging on the line outside. A lady told her about the toxic cloud.
She was terrified and closed herself inside the house. No one knew exactly where the fire was, where the cloud was going. My daughter could have come to me in the vicinity of Belluno, but at 6:00pm the Arpav announced that there was no danger of dioxin. My daughter stayed where she was.
The following day there were other reassuring communications, then in the evening finally the truth: there was dioxin and benzene and other carcinogenic substances. My daughter was desperate.
The following day, Friday 20 April, she came to my place with the two girls. But too late. From that moment she hasn’t eaten or slept. She believes she is guilty of not having escaped earlier.
What’s more the girls are ill with a temperature, cough and cold. Obviously this doesn’t mean anything, because they are often ill. What’s more, no one knows what to do.
No one gives precise indications. What to do with the washing that stayed out that day and all the night. About the push chair left out all day, of the long-haired dog that stayed outside, of the grass in the garden?
We can’t even find out whether the place where my daughter lives, Varago di Maserada sul Piave is in the zone where the cloud spread.
And now is it OK to go back? Who should we believe? Who is responsible for the psychological health of my daughter?
Apart from the need to have precise information, I would like to denounce something but I don’t know how and to whom.
My daughter had the possibility to go away, after all she is unemployed. She didn’t do that because of the information given out by Arpav.”
Maria da Cesiomaggiore (TV)

“Moles, blackbirds, sparrows and pigeons in unimaginable quantities. The death of small animals around the De Longhi factory is making those people residing in the neighbourhoods of Fiera and Selvana di Treviso tremble.” La Stampa.

For the moment we are not yet talking about Seveso. It’s only the small-sized local fauna that has dwindled. Dioxin no, Dioxin yes. Dioxin De Longhi.

Italy has an ecological footprint of 4.2. The footprint compares the inhabitants with the territory that can be used, energy, water, food. The more inhabitants there are for the same resources, the more the footprint seems like a kick up the backside and approaches zero.
The inhabitants with the greatest footprint, like Morocco with 0.9, are trying to get better footprints. The United States are among those who are the biggest consumers of resources. A small State like Maine has the same surface area as the North of Italy and 1,300,000 inhabitants.
The States must therefore have a tiddly footprint. But no, they’ve got 9.6. They consume the footprints of the others…
The solution to the Bossi-Fini is not a new law but new migration flows. Let the countries with the best pedigree take the emigrants and the excess of Italian pensioners. So let those who have a good quantity of resources and a low population density assume their responsibilities. Advice for the boat owners?
Canada 7.6, Sweden 6.1 and Australia 6.6. They can even be satisfied with France 5.6, with almost twice our surface area and a population only slightly higher than ours.
Italy is 35% mountainous and it’s saturated. It’s over-saturated. It needs emigration flows. We should do like the Japanese and keep 30% of the population round the world taking photos.
Laws are of no use against the impenetrability of bodies. The Po Valley no longer exists. It’s the Po Periphery. Rubbish is on the increase? Is there no longer water for all? Is there not sufficient energy? As well as consumption, let’s also reduce the inhabitants.
I want an ecological footprint of 7 and 50 million inhabitants. Not one more. The drop in population numbers is not taboo, nor a calamity. Move the power from those possessing capital to those possessing work. It’s a fortune, let’s not let it escape us.

Living Planet 2006 Report.

The multinationals are always trying. But on a small scale, someone is reacting. What’s needed is lots of courage and a few sponsors. That’s what the blog is here for Signor Privato.

"Dear Beppe Grillo,
My first name is Privato. My surname is Fenaroli. I am the Head of the Breast Surgery Department and the Centre for Breast Studies at the United Hospitals of Bergamo. I live at Tavernola Bergamasca on Lake Iseo (on the Bergamo side) where there is a cement factory belonging to Lafarge, the French multinational that is a world leader in cement production. Now they also want to burn special refuse in the Tavernola cement factory. Tavernola is a village with 2,400 people and because of the cement production it has a level of pollution from nitrogen oxide NOx (Source: Arpa) like that of the city of Bergamo (about 100,000 inhabitants). We have formed a Civil Committee for Public Health and I am the leader. We want to stand up against this attempt and we have produced fliers and had meetings. Last October we even invited Stefano Montanari to Tavernola to show us the risks of this type of activity and we made contributions to the fund to buy the electron microscope.
Now as I am the leader of the Committee, I find an action for defamation has been taken against me by Lafarge. According to them, the fliers showing true data (taken from the official INES register) about pollution are offensive and incorrect.
I have discovered that in a similar case, involving a Mayor in the Province of Udine, that you intervened. We, unfortunately, have the Mayor (email the Town Hall) against us and we are tiny compared to Lafarge. But we will not let them frighten us off. Signor Grillo, can you help us? If they make us keep silent, they are imposing silence on a whole community. I know that you will be at Treviglio (near our village) on May 12 and as the Committee for Public Health, we will be present at your show, from which we always learn lots.
I know that we are perhaps asking for the impossible, but we want to be able to place our trust in your feelings to help the weakest and those exposed to the multinationals. I thank you, in the name of those I’m representing and all those who would like to speak but who for many reasons are afraid and need examples who are visible like yourself.”
Privato Fenaroli

“Water is not a commercial product”.
Repeat this every morning in front of the mirror. It’ll give you awareness.
Numbers talk and they whisper data to us that we don’t want to hear. A thousand million people have no drinking water.
ne million eight hundred thousand children die each year from illnesses caused by polluted water. Where does the water go? A cup of coffee needs 140 litres of water, a pair of jeans needs 11,000 litres, a car 400,000 litres. And only 3% of the water on the planet is drinkable.
In Italy, water is a financial resource and thus it gets privatized. Where before there was a spring, a public fountain, the entrepreneurs have arrived. The water commercialisers. A primary good is transformed into shares, assets, profits.
Water must stay in public hands, our hands. If the public domestic water supply doesn’t work, if it’s got a hole in it, it should be repaired, even if we have to kick them up the backside. Private people must stay out.
I’m publishing part of the letter received from the President of Greenpeace Italia.

“The Directive 60/2000 of the European Union says: “… water is not a commercial product but patrimony that should be protected”.
The lack of culture on water brings about the consumption of 170 litres of bottled water per inhabitant every year, as opposed to a European average of 85 and a world average of 15, equivalent to 5,000,000,000 plastic containers that get transformed into 100,000 tons of urban refuse per year.
Bottled water, subject to control mechanisms that often are not completely secure, costs between 30 and 50 cents to which you have to add the cost of disposing of the containers, whereas 1,000 litres of water from the domestic water supply, more carefully controlled on a chemical-bacteriological level, doesn’t cost more than one euro.
The Italians say that at the basis of this paradox there is the conviction that bottled water is safer (51%), “better” (35%), less “hard” (14%).
Our country is rich in underground water (between 5,000,000,000 and 12,000,000,000 cubic metres). In spite of this, the water crisis is very near in the whole country, as is the global climate change effect that will see the drying out of the Centre-South and the semi-tropicalisation of the North.
What’s the origin of this announced scarcity?
- a decade long lack of care and lack of maintenance of the networks with a level of leaks that goes from 30% in Emilia-Romagna and more than 50% of the Domestic water system in Puglia.
- pollution of the rivers by industrial sites, both active and no longer in use, by urban centres going against every regulation, even because of the total lack of environmental controls.
- unsustainable water needs of a primary sector that for decades has been characterized by intensive monocultures and irrigation techniques (for example: spraying) that dissipates more than 30% of the water that is used
- the general lack of equipment that minimizes consumption and gives an equal service, for domestic consumption.
In relation to this, the excellent experiment carried out at Bagnacavallo in Emilia Romagna has shown how just this measure, whose cost is really low (2-3 Euro per inhabitant) is paid back with blank certificates for the reduced energy costs for the water service and it allows family consumption to be reduced by at least 10-12 %.”
Walter Ganapini, President of Greenpeace Italia

In April or May, the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) will publish its Fourth Report on Climate Change commissioned by the United Nations. A few weeks ago an extract: “Climate Changes – Summary for Policymakers” was presented in Paris.
2,500 experts from 130 nations have worked for 6 years to say something that we were witnessing, that we already knew: that our offspring and their offspring will think of us as delinquents.
If the first part of the twentieth century produced great criminals like Hitler and Stalin, their successors have been hundreds of millions. Nations, States, Corporations. Never like in this period will the sins of the fathers be visited on their sons.
The usual “no global” people, the catastrophists, not even the journalists (who have shattered our balls with Mastrogiacomo and the team game played using money from the State) are saying this. It’s the United Nations. It’s the scientists who are writing.
There’s discussion of the melting of the glaciers, of the disappearance of the great rivers, of the poisoning of entire cities as though these facts were relating to someone else.
And it’s true. They relate to our offspring. The ones that we are taking to see the pediatrician for a cough, but who tomorrow will not even have air. Eleven of the last twelve years have been among the hottest since 1850, when reliable records began. Thirty per cent of the species are at risk of extinction. Tropical forests will be substituted by the Savanna. Between 1,000,000,000 to 3,000,000,000 people could die of hunger or thirst.



When will all this happen? In a few decades. Very soon. If you look at a photo of the North Pole from the satellite, you will see that it is disappearing. Future generations will talk of the Pole as we talk about the fabulous Atlantis. Why is all this happening? Has our species voted for suicide like the lemmings?
The causes. We need to take action on the causes. But if that’s the effect, rather than the causes we should be talking about the blame, of criminals, of politicians serving the economy based on oil and of growth without limits.
Certainly, once we know that we are committing suicide, we must do something. We must do it and impose it on our employees. The priority is the life of future generations. For all the rest, dear employees, we no longer give a fig!

China and India arrived late at the CO2 banquet, but with big appetites. Up until now it has been the United States and Old Europe who have taken care of poisoning the planet. The Chinese and the Indians are right. It’s intolerable to let the pollution and destruction of the environment be considered a Western copyright. It’s a competition to see who is the strongest.
We can share in the thinking behind the arguments of Gao Guangsheng, Director of China’s Climate Change Programme:
“China uses carbon, not because it loves it, but because it’s the resource that it has available.” Gao gets cross with Australia. In fact if China could produce the same amount of CO2 per head. 20 million Australians against one thousand three hundred million Chinese people. That could get to 8,600,000,000 tons of CO2 from the 1,300,000,000 tons currently. It’s obvious. It’s a demographic problem.
Every inhabitant of the planet must have their CO2 quota from birth.
According to the International Energy Agency, China will become the leader in CO2 emissions in 2009. Beating the United States.
If it gets there. 16 of the 20 most polluting cities in the world are Chinese. 400,000 Chinese die every year from smog. A quarter of the Chinese drink polluted water.
We are devouring the world. The West is exporting pollution together with below cost production. It’s often dictating slavery. The more that China and India are producing. The more they export. The more the GDP increases and the prices go down. It is a suicide race.
Governments must change their priorities. Cancel the Ministries of the Environment. They are just an embellishment. They never count for anything. Institute Ministries of Humanity. On which all the others depend. With the power of veto.
A sick economy is accelerating its growth and our destruction. It is bartering the GDP with the planet. The polluting countries, including ours, deserve a new Nuremburg trial. The judge, who is also the executioner, already exists. It is our earth.

Near to Serre in the province of Salerno, there are otters and herons and pure air. It’s an ideal place for a mega tip with sewer rats. The inhabitants protest, but they shouldn’t. They too get likened to the shit. Who do they think they are?
To resolve the constant problem of the tips there are however two solutions. The first is to leave the refuse where it is in the cities. Between Pm10, dog excrement (and also human) and urban rubbish of every type no one will notice.
In fact who notices the pong of the city? A tip in Piazza del Duomo in Milano or in Piazza Venezia in Roma would not be noticed.
The other solution: China. From that far off and immense country every day massive ships arrive full. They go back empty. They should be filled up with refuse. Pay something to China that will win out.
For us it would cost less than the construction of purifiers and mega tips. With the benefit to the companies, for employment and for foreign commerce.
Let’s read Martino’s letter and let’s visit the Oasi Faunistica di Persano while we are in time.

“Dear Beppe Grillo,
I’m a young man living in Serre. My community has been living a nightmare for the last two months since Bertolaso, the current boss of the refuse emergency has identified a clay quarry at Serre with dimensions of 60,000 m2 and a height of 25 metres where he has decided to install a regional mega tip, to resolve the refuse emergency. A beautiful idea? I don’t think so!
Even a child would be able to identify this as a stupid idea! Why?
Perhaps because this regional mega tip will be in the Oasi Faunistica di Persano (DPGR 4060/1976) where there are many animals in danger of extinction, like the otter, many species of bird like the heron and it is a very important resting place on the migration routes of birds!
The tip will be 400 metres from the River Sele that irrigates all the Sele plain, that is the most productive agricultural region in the whole of Campania. This tip would bring down to its knees the economy of a whole province!
At a few metres from the site, the Puglia water supply draws drinking water for the homes in Puglia. I believe that if a tip is placed near the River Sele the people of Puglia will be drinking rubbish!
This is one thought about the topic: why haven’t the politicians lifted a finger for the fifteen years of the refuse emergency? And why is it always the province of Salerno (that is becoming Campania’s rubbish dump) that has to pay? And why is it always Serre that has to pay with the presence of 3 tips already? The reply from these gentlemen (even including the Lega ambiente and the CGIL) is:
”Better to kill a small village than a big city!”
Anyway Beppe, help us! I don’t know who to turn to.”
Martino

The inhabitants of the sea are disappearing. The nets and our jaws are consuming them one by one. Last November (*) an article in ‘Science’ magazine predicted the collapse of commercial fishing by the year 2048. An event that has already been foreseen in the reduction in the shoals of cod.

Cod catches in millions of tons. Period: 1950-2002. Blue: North East Atlantic. Green: North West Atlantic. Red: Total

Our grandchildren will see many fish just in the aquarium or in historical documents. To resolve the problem we need to get too many countries to agree. Too many interests and even too many scoundrels. And to define a sustainable ecosystem and fishing quotas for each nation. Improbable.
There is an alternative. Starting from our behaviour. From the money we spend and how we spend it.
In 1999 the Monterey Bay Acquarium has started an initiative called Seafoodwatch. The species that are going into extinction are listed in a pocket guide that has already seen 8 million copies distributed.
Among these are the monkfish, the red snapper, the shark, the sturgeon, and the swordfish. The guide also shows alternative choices of species that are not at risk of extinction. Many Californian restaurants have joined the sustainable fishing initiative and are eliminating from their menus the species at risk.
To get the initiative going in Italy I will translate the guide with the permission of the Monterey Bay Acquarium. I will make it available in pdf format and I will insert it on the blog with a list of all the Italian restaurants that are joining the initiative.
(*) Global Loss of Biodiversity Harming Ocean Bounty Science

Dallas Ransom 2004

The construction of car parks where you pay continues without a pause in our cities. You pay to park even at the hospital to visit a sick person. Car parks have speculative designs.
They are useful as earners for those who give the areas in concession, for those who construct, for those who get the cash for parking. They are of no use to reduce the traffic. In fact they increase it. More spaces for cars. More cars.
If the purpose of the car parks is to make money, to change things we need to use the counter measures. We’ll build pay parks instead of car parks. Parks that are cared for and controlled. Without broken benches, needles and drug addicts. Parks for children. For elderly people.
For those who want to read a book lying on the grass. With checks at the entrance. Pay to get what we deserve as a right seems folly. But if it’s the only way to get back the public land, let’s do it. Pay parks in the cities would be bursting at the seams. A tiny entrance fee could be enough. We’d partly avoid the weekend exodus to see an oak or a cow.
A few suggestions for those who would like to exchange metal boxes with trees:
- Tell the town authorities to fence off the pavement where your front gate is with elegant steel bars. Like in Amsterdam. The tiny rectangle of land surrounded by metal in a few months will become a meadow. It can be done.
- Collect the highest number of signatures to reconvert a square transformed into a car park into a public garden. It’s a question of shifting 50 to 60 fxxking cars to give back the space to the citizens. Because it belongs to the citizens.
- Create Acquisition Groupings for the parks to make an offer for the public areas used or to be used for car parking.
Tiny meadows, public gardens, pay parks. It’s possible. Show that it is possible.

Rosa and Olindo, the precursors of a New Italy that is waking up to itself now. They killed four people because of the noise coming from the floor above. They were overcome with madness. Alessandro used his knife twenty times on his neighbour. Because his dogs barked.
Noise can be clattering, like the noise made by the rubbish collection lorry at six in the morning. Disturbing like the hooter of the scoundrel who insists on bringing his car into the city centre and then finds himself in a jam. Yesterday I even saw a Smart blaring away at a lady on a pedestrian crossing because she wasn’t walking fast.
Noise can be nauseating like the high volume advertising on TV. Wallpaper-style like the programmes that have talked about the elderlyboiledcouple in every moment. Or the unsilenceable anti-theft device of an apartment whose owners are away on holiday.
Noise. Pronounce this word slowly: n-o-i-s-e. Turn the radio off. The TV off. Get double glazing. Get the apartment sound-proofed. And listen to words. Your words, your friends’, your children’s. Isn’t it wonderful?
Noise makes us deaf. It is estimated that the hearing capacity of those who live in a city or in a noisy environment is reduced by 30%. Anyone who shouts, turns up the radio in the car, turns up the volume for the advertising spot, should be fined. Severely. I propose decibel sensors available to the urban police and the condominium administrators. On the signs welcoming you to the city or town, as well as the speed limits, there should also be a maximum decibel limit.
Noise is a violation of our privacy. No one gives the right to a crazy guy to shoot 100 decibels at our ear drums. Noise is also in the background, and we no longer pick it up, but it corrodes the mind.
The violation of your home is valid even for noise. If a noise is not authorised to enter our homes it has to stay outside the door. And if it’s so obstinate that it comes back day after day, it could happen that the source of the noise gets suppressed. Basically it’s only a question of privacy.

Gore Vidal has recently come to Italy and has sent me a letter for the Blog.

"Dear Beppe,
Humanity – and the whole world with it – is at a decision point. We have to start acting now because if we don't change direction there's a good chance that there will be no world to look after in ten or fifteen years. And we will be dead or dying. And the saddest thing is that this would not happen because of an inevitable destiny but for a simple lack of political will.
There's a need for a primitive impulse of a survival spirit of which there is no trace today. In 1957 I wrote a play called 'Visit to a Small Planet', and everyone was blown away. At that time the planet was considered to be a source of eternal riches and anything but tiny. Obviously today we know that it's not like that.
Recently I've had a conversation with Gorbachov, who asked me "Do you know which is the most important liquid on earth?" "Vodka?" I replied. "Petrol?" No – water". He said. And it's true. Even water is a limited resource. But humanity has always persisted in its illusions of eternity…
Humanity – and the West in particular – must radically change its life style if it doesn't want to eliminate itself. And a change of direction must come first of all from the United States, the leading consumers and polluters in the world. The problem is to convince our government or rather the shadow government that controls it, that responds only to a delirious capitalism.
That, in simple words, consists of creating products that we don't need and finding the way to sell them to us, without caring about the consequences. What's more, capitalism cannot survive except in the absence of laws.
It obeys no law except the fictitious ones that the system itself has created, like "supply and demand" And this is why we can expect no change from on high except with the weight of pressure from the people.
It is paradoxical that many governments, like that of the United States, feel legitimized to get mixed up in our liberty to reproduce but don't waste a word on the electricity that we consume. This is why the change must start from below.
This year we are starting to supply our house in California solely with solar energy. But I don't see how the average citizen can do that. It's still very costly at least in the United States. This is why the actions of an individual – though very important – must aim at institutional change. And today our cause is supported by a series of powerful and innovative tools like the Internet…
And we have to go yet further in reorganizing our lives. And this is the difficult part: to renounce what gives us pleasure has never been part of our nature.
Think of the millions of smokers in the world. I have recently lost a close friend who continued to smoke until the day of his death, even though he knew that smoking was killing him…
People – even Americans – are starting to wake up. There's a growing revolutionary feeling in the air. Governments are starting to wake up: for example I am looking with admiration at what Hugo Chavez is doing.
It's an inspiration for the whole world, unlike the United States that is not an inspiration for anyone apart from potential dictators. Even our politicians know very well what is happening in the world but they are paid to stay silent. This does not mean that one day they won't rise up against their masters.
But I'm warning you: the process of change will also be a violent one. The elite - the corporations – will not easily give up their privileges. However, you start your revolution and I will be happy to be your Trotsky."

Gore Vidal

The letter from the Pope was almost false. Almost because the letter refers to concepts expressed with and by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone in our meeting. Almost because the Pope himself has made statements more than once in favour of renewable energy.
Almost because the people, as demonstrated by the comments, would like to have a Pope who communicates with them via the internet. And one who holds close to his heart the future of our planet.
Almost because the photo with the Cardinal is true (many swore it was a photomontage). Almost because no newspaper, TV News, magazine, radio has talked about it. And when this happens, the news item is ALWAYS true. The exception to this is radio radicale, but only because they took exception to the scoop on Pannella.
Almost because the Vatican really wants to concern itself with clean energy starting from its buildings. Almost because the post picks up a good portion of the speech made by the Pope at the university of Ratisbona.
A speech broadcast for a month by the media. An item of evidence that I wanted to insert precisely for a post that is almost false and not almost true. Almost because the quoted words of the cardinal are true.
I and my renewable energy experts are available to the Vatican for free. To let them save and to give an example. Next time I will publish a letter from the Most High, with whom I am in contacts to at least negotiate purgatory.
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea grandissima culpa. The next time the Pope writes to me, no one will believe it. Not even Cardinal Bertone who telephoned me for congratulations.

Dear signor Giuseppe Grillo,

It is a pleasure for me to be able to send you this letter about renewable energy. My thoughts go back to the years when I started my activity as a university teacher at the University of Bonn. It was 1959 and still the time of the old university of ordinary lecturers.
Contacts with historians, economists and naturally with the theology faculty were very close. Once every semester there was a so called "dies academicus" in which the professors of all the faculties presented themselves in front of the students of the whole University, thus making it possible to have a true university experience: the fact that, in spite of all the specializations that at times make us incapable of communicating with each other, we form a whole and we work in this whole with the single reason with its various dimensions, thus staying together even in the common responsibility for the correct use of reason. This fact became a living experience. This internal cohesion in the cosmos of reason is not disturbed even when on one occasion one of our colleagues said that there was something strange in our university: two faculties that were concerned with something that did not yet exist: renewable energy.
Even faced with such a radical skepticism, it is necessary and reasonable to ask about energy from the wind and the sun. To reason about this and that this must be done in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: however in the whole university this was a position that was not discussed.



All this came back to me during a dialogue with Cardinale Tarcisio Bertone with whom you recently had a personal audience in Genoa.
Cardinale Tarcisio Bertone reminded me that we are relying almost exclusively on a single source of energy: oil. And that we must find alternative sources.
The dialogue covered all the structures that allow for alternative energy sources and it paid particular attention above all to the use of photovoltaic panels on buildings owned by the Vatican, starting with schools and hospitals. In this letter I would like to mention a subject that within the context of the topic "nature and reason" has fascinated me and that will serve as a starting point for my reflections on this theme.
In the seventh discussion (διάλεξις – controversy) edited by prof. Khoury, the emperor explains in great detail the reasons for which the spread of civilization by means of violence is against nature is something that is unreasonable. Violence is in contrast to the nature of God and the nature of the spirit.
The decisive statement in this argument is: to not act according to reason is against the nature of God and against the conservation of our planet. The editor Theodore Khoury, comments: for the emperor, a Byzantine, this affirmation was evident.
Here a dilemma opens up. One that today challenges us directly. Is the conviction that acting against nature is in contradiction to the nature of God, only a Greek thought, or is it always valid and is it valid on its own merits? I think that on this point there is a demonstration of the profound agreement between what is Greek in the best sense and what is faith in God based on the Bible. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, John started off the prologue to his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the λόγος".
This is the exact word that is used by the emperor: God acts with the logos. Logos means both "reason" and "word" – a reason that is creator and capable of communicating itself but, precisely, as reason. The faith of the church has always kept to the conviction that between God and us, between his eternal creator Spirit and our created reason, a true analogy exists, in which certainly the dissimilarities are infinitely bigger than the similarities, however not up to the point of abolishing the analogy and its language (compare Lat IV).
God does not become more divine by the fact that we push him further from us in a pure and impenetrable voluntary-ism. But the truly divine God is that God that has shown himself as logos and has acted as logos and acts full of love in our favour, including in this the natural environment.
In the western world ther