Friday 25 July 2008

Barcelona 2018

One Sunday on November 2006, I could read a piece of news in which it was said that, in the case some measures were not taken, in 2018 traffic jams would collapse the city of Barcelona. The truth is that piece of news atonished me because Barcelona is one of the best organized cities in Spain when you speak in terms of public transport or at least I thought so. The point was that public transport should be adapted to new demand. I couldn't help thinking the stacks and stacks of asphalt that were and are being spent.... think about it. We are fragmentating the envioronment at full speed and that's no good at all, above all for animals which need big extensions of land like iberic lynxes or bears.

I'm absolutely convinced that even with 18 lanes streets or roads, in not many years time, they would be collapsed. And why? Because we humans are as we are, there's no awareness , there's no culture of responsibility respect to the environmental limits. I know there are a very big bunch of people who couldn't care less pollution. To them is not a big deal to asphalt everywhere, it's not a big deal to fragment most ecosystems. Think about that, the less cars driving the less space we need to asphalt, I don't know if you catch me. Imagine if we have so much land asphalted in Spain that if we used all that surface to produce green energy we could supply all the energy that our country needs...... Go back to think about it.

To conclude, I think asphalting a lot of land impoverishes a lot of people, in the long term, and makes rich a few ones, in the short term. We almost have the same kilometers of highways than Germany, but Germany almost doubles us in population and the worst is that some of the highways built are not justified because they are underutilised. Dear politicians, please, change your policy of asphalting, because it is bread for today and hunger for tomorrow; please drivers, think about no using so much your box of four wheels, don't be so lazy above all if you are alone in your car. Put into practice this: 4 x 4 = four wheels for four people. Thanks.

Friday 4 July 2008

Out of Place

One weekend in November 2006 was one of those special weekends you keep in mind. It was a weekend spent in good company at the Mas of Noguera. "Mas" is a valencian word, valencian is a languaje we speak in the east of Spain and Mas means something like a rural house but not exactly. During that weekend I saw several times a happy group of cats, quiet, well regarded, well attended and keeping my way of thinking, in those moments came to my mind the introduction of foreign species....

It is sure that more than one people think that from the old times cats have been everywhere: but no, cats, as everything in this life, have had their own place and their own moment, up to the moment in which one mammal called "man" took it out from its original place.

Such a sweet image in the Mas could be translated into a fierce predator in the island of El Hierro in the Canary Islands or in an island-continent as Austrilia. In these places our friendly pussy-cat standed out in an environment which had never known its presence, imagine the catastrophe....

Homeless cats adpapted to live in the wild were about to die out the giant lizards in the island of El Hierro (Canary Islands). In Australia that type of cats went so far that authorities raised the possiblity of having a free-cat country in 2020. And why? It is very easy, a cat killed and kills about 1000 birds and small mammals a year. Similar problems have already been raised in some states of the USA.

Some day, to see things with more detail, I will tell you the story of the LightHouse Worker's Cat. I hope nobody thinks that I don't like cats at all, in fact I have one, neither I want people killing cats everywhere. The only thing I want is people having cats under control.