Death of Planet Earth

It's three o'clock in the afternoon in August of the year 20... The temperatures are soaring to the 50s. The UV factor is so dangerous that shops and offices now function at night and people go to sleep by day! The landscape is practically lunar in its barrenness; at least what's left of it. The sea is devoid of the windsurfers and lilos that once teemed across its tranquil warm water. Swimming would now bring on instant death by poison or scorching! Most of Malta and Gozo are asleep in specially insulated units wherein the body temperature is kept at a constant 18 degrees. The only living things en plein air are the cockroaches waving their antennae on Mount Maghtab.

A tanker appears off the Bahar ic-Caghaq horizon. Slowly it drifts towards a somnolent Malta carrying millions of gallons of much-needed fuel to keep those same life-saving units in operation. It begins to list. A huge explosion rents the air. Glass shatters in Marsaxlokk! Malta shakes to its very foundations. The oil spreads in a burning black shroud over the boiling sea. A vein of methane gas that had been trapped for a century under Mount Maghtab finally finds a way out of its prison and is drawn to the column of fire and black smoke from the tanker. Bugibba, Qawra and St Paul's Bay are instantly enveloped in a sheet of flame while toxic fumes spread to Mosta and Naxxar...

Need I go on?

This could be a reality very soon! Within our own lifetimes if we do not take stock of the damage we have wrought so far. There are some of us alive today who remember what it was like before the vicious circle of global warming and over-consumption took over our lives. We now cannot function without air-conditioning in our homes and in our cars. Everything we touch is electric. Our daily waste due to packaging is already at a ridiculous level.

Take a good hard look around you and tell me how biodegradable most of the stuff we throw away is? Tetra packs and plastic are choking us already! What happened to good old glass? Like the indestructible cockroach, the blobs of chewing gum survive everything. If we go on like this we will destroy ourselves within the next couple of decades. Have you ever smelled the air behind a scammel?

We are not alone in this. The world is going the same way! Is it too late? Not if we take a hard-nosed decision to run this country ecologically. If we harness our greatest natural resources, the sun and the wind, we would not need to pollute ourselves, would we? What are we waiting for?

I have been told that this ecological process is very expensive. Why? What is so expensive where life and death hang in the balance?

Man has not abused but actually raped the earth's resources. We Maltese are no exception. We are polluting our island and its surrounding sea systematically. As we are so small it is so evident too. How can we expect to live off tourism if we are unconsciously wallowing in a mound of squalid dirt ourselves?

We are killing the goose that supplies the golden eggs. Malta is becoming one vast building site. We are destroying our own heritage, our architecture with our greed, our countryside with our waste! Having a wall of obsolete rusting white goods instead of a rubble wall is not exactly picturesque! I have seen it and so have you! Look over into a valley in Dwejra or Wardija and look at the junk choking the vegetation! I have seen it and so have you!

I appeal to the government and the people of Malta to do something before it is too late. Forget "growth" and "profit". Put "quick results" and " tax holidays" on the backburner and concentrate on solving this terrible threat to our very existence. Having yet another landfill next to our prehistoric sites is not going to solve anything. It's totally defeatist! When that's full then what? Valletta? Mdina?

We still have a sporting chance to transform Malta into an ecological paradise which if successful would have the tourists queuing to get here!

We can actually lead and show the Europe we are about to join what the Maltese can achieve if they put their mind to it!

It will not be achieved in a day or even within a legislature. This, oh politicos, is a long-term job without the vote-catching power and personal kudos attached to it! You will have to battle the incomprehension of those who have made it their business to "develop" Malta into the Little Shop of Horrors it is fast becoming. You will have to re-educate the people to understand that life is not sustained in a tin or a tetra pack. To do this the law must be changed and enforced. In Singapore it is a crime to chew chewing gum, let alone dump it!

You all know precisely what I am talking about! Take the bull by the horns and be brave as tomorrow it may be too late!

kzt@onvol.net