These girls are bathing @ the Tagus river / rio Tejo, that runs from Spain to Portugal, ending @ the Atlantic Ocean. They must be out their minds: once a river with dolphins, Tagus is now suffering, dying slowly. BBC World had a documentary on european rivers and Tagus was presented as an extreme case of terrible pollution problems.
Lack of environmental politics is obvious, not only when a river dies in just a few years, but also when the law allows buildings this big, rise meters away from the Atlantic...
Eliza Guimarães Ferreira has had difficult times. What did she do at all? BBC World tried to found out, but didn't discover much. Tagus is worst than ever, and the portuguese government seems to only act, when under protest. This is very worrying. I worry when measures are taken, just because of their popularity.
Yet another industrial facility said to be operating, without the proper environmental equipment.
Insignificant people like me might (frequently) write about the death threat that hangs on nearly every river and forest the planet knows, but many governments simply don't care to educate their citizens, many times due to those same citizens' fault. What do I mean?
Nowadays, all people live not caring about their sons and daughters' world. Of course that when things are put this way, you may not agree at first... however, stop and think for a while: do you really care or feel capable of doing something against general pollution?
For example, do you think it would help if you drove an electric car, or stopped using paper? Well, if it was you alone, I very much doubt it could make a difference. And you too think this way - that is why you don't follow any of the aforementioned examples, that could contribute to increase air quality and forests' life expectancy, just to write the two most obvious effects...
But what if I am judging you wrong and if you indeed are someone with the balls to be alone on such expensive / uncomfortable measures? Maybe you have to the financial power to pay for a more expensive / less capable electric vehicle, and maybe you can live without other paper, than toilet & electronic paper :)
Well, if that is the case, two things: #1) congratulations! #2) it is a shame your government doesn't support you. In fact, in what comes to environmental policy, governments are very much like private corporations: they fight for the best deals, against some powerful concurrents.
But then again, what if a government had the power to REALLY care about environment? Would that government risk unpopular measures? Bottom line is popularity determines too much these days. And because popularity comes from the people, the people are to blame! Check the example that follows.
Some scientists agree that nuclear power is the only way ahead, yet if an european government decided to cut on more conventional power plants, there would be massive protests, complaining precisely about "nuclear is pollution!".
But nuclear power is NOT necessarily pollution. In fact, nuclear power can be absolutely clean. Nuclear energy can be obtained by FISSION or by FUSION.
FISSION is splitting the atoms; fission reactions do create radioactive products.
FUSION is combining the atoms; fusion does NOT create radioactive products.
But fusion is hard and kind of theory right now. Nuclei repel each other, and so it is very hard to control such reactions. We don't have the technology to do it, but we could have, if we had more money in nuclear investigation.
The problem is, again, popularity. Average Joe & Mary would panic if they read that the money from their taxes being applied to "nuclear energy".
Still, even without nuclear power plants running fusion technology, it could be better to have everything on Earth moving on fission engines, IF we knew how to assure the 100% safe disposal of the radioactive products. We can't assure that, but in many cases the risk would be worth it.
Planet Earth spends millions of millions of millions (millions^3) of dollars, every DAY, on non-renewable polluting power sources. For example, if cars could accepts nuclear fuel, a lipstick seized battery could run a car for ~100 years, not emitting CO and other nasty gases. And if every car on Earth used such technology, we would be breathing TOP quality air in very few years time.
However until fusion arrives, nuclear is dangerous, because people tend to be stupid. Remember Chernobyl? Until then, why not solar power plants?
The industry has leaked reports about 100% clean alternatives that could cut the cake, with very little investment, relative to conventional spendings. Still, HUGE interests, corruption up to the governments, and average Joe & Mary mentality, will continue to drive us to the complete ending of the worlds' non renewable resources.
It is my fault. It is your fault. It is our fault. It is everyone's fault. We don't care about the future.
Check the pictures on your left & right, about a recent BBC World documentary on european rivers...
The last few weeks have been really stressing. I am dead tired, with too many works on hands, yet I think I will be able to take a breath on April and I'll probably manage to continue the redesign of this one year young website.
The last time I uploaded an update (day 02 April 2000), you probably didn't notice it, but there were considerable changes, related to the file structure / folder arrangement. Such changes were vital to what follows... and that will be the better integration of Alain Prost Racing (APR) and Apaa and the complete reinvention of SMG.
Current APR contents will be integrated as pages on racing, racing simulation and, of course, the online racing time.
Current Apaa contents, will be integrated as pages on Astronomy and, of course, the Apaa section.
Current SMG contents, will be integrated as pages on Pop culture.
AUDIOPT lives on its own domain and will have some cool novelties, like the concept of "mini-audios", which will be short PDFs of the magazine you can buy on the shelves!
Please give me time. I hardly sleep these days :)
This picture is taken from inside a boat navigating the Tagus river. Check what happens, when you carve against the water... WHAT WATER?!
These two portuguese presented BBC World an extremely interesting report on the health of the river!
This bottle's water was analyzed and found to be light years far from healthy.
Tagus could be clean, and life full, as it once was. But it is not. People only live for tomorrow. We are paying for the mistakes of our grand parents and doing nothing for the future.