Short Stories

You have to stand up to stupidity and arrogance when you feel that enough is enough. Don’t you agree? After a period of consultation and discussion, we at ECO 123 decided in 2010 to embark on a path to reduce our carbon footprint. We considered entrusting our money to a bank in Monchique. But they wanted to get rich at …

What is so-called “artificial intelligence” and what is it allowed to do? Steal drawings from existing works and distribute them under its own name? Is so-called artificial intelligence, to put it simply, nothing more than “copy paste”? “We are committed to the protection of human creativity and want to achieve fair conditions for authors and creatives in the age of …

MED Loulé Hello, cultural diversity! Over three days – Thursday 25, Friday 26 and Saturday 27 June – there will be concerts of world music in Loulé, performed on eight different stages. The historical part of the old town, with its narrow streets and squares, provides an unforgettable setting for the 21st edition of the MED Music Festival, featuring Sérgio …

This has been a dreadful week for journalists and breaking news. What is there to report? An outbreak of a new virus that originated in the Canary Islands is beginning to spread worldwide, which isn’t true. A mentally disabled president is on holiday in Beijing, which isn’t true either. This or that government has little money left in its state …

The Algarve is Portugal’s sunniest region, where most of the country’s fruit is grown and harvested: oranges, mangoes, kiwis, grapes, avocados and much, much more… Bananas! The umbrella organisation APCOI (Associação Portuguesa Contra a Obesidade Infantil – Portuguese Association Against Childhood Obesity), which is concerned about obese children in schools all across the Algarve, has launched an initiative called ‘Fruit Heroes’. This …

How can we turn losers into winners? How can a city, a region or a country reduce the environmental pollution caused by transport and by the heating and cooling of buildings in the private and industrial sectors? Greenpeace has looked into this question and published a study on the subject. ECO123 presents this study here and highly recommends it. The …

Leading a successful climate-neutral life presupposes that the overwhelming majority of my readers, the overwhelming majority of my fellow human beings, will understand what I am writing. Achieving this takes time, since it requires a clear head, an open mind and the ability to think about the future, to put ourselves in the shoes of future generations, to become future-proof, …

The town hall has produced a lovely photo for us. It is intended to show the leading characters at a tree-planting event. So, who do we see? The mayor, the chief of the fire brigade, the other elected representatives of the Monchique district council and members of the town hall staff – a total of eight people who had their …

I’m no know-it-all, but, in this article, I’ll be taking the liberty of speaking freely about ideas, rather than succumbing to a sense of powerlessness. Because unleashing the potential of a truly united Europe requires bold, unconventional ideas. We simply need to be able to say what we think, what we’re worried about, and what solutions we propose. For example, …

Last week I was asked when would be the right time to sell Homo sapiens’ favourite toy – the car, powered by either diesel or petrol. Now is the right time, I’d like to whisper to all my readers. Sell it now, but do so quietly, without any fuss – without making a big deal out of it. Furthermore, it’s …