Short Stories

Saturday, 31st October 2020 Good to live outside of cities. According to a study by research website Comparitech*, most of the world’s most surveilled cities are located in China. The country has been making headlines for its generous use of surveillance technology and is featured heavily throughout the whole ranking that looked at the 150 most populous cities worldwide, excluding those for which insufficient data was available. The Chinese city of Taiyuan, located in the Shanxi province roughly 300 miles Southwest of Beijing, tops the list with 120 public CCTV cameras per 1,000 inhabitants. The highest-ranked non-Chinese city is London, …

Saturday the 24th of October 2020 If you take a closer look at the latest OECD statistics about the consumption of antidepressants  and compare these with figures from the other 26 EU member states, you will find that Portugal is the country with the highest number of users of this kind of prescription drug. Germany, France and Italy consume only about half that amount. And even Denmark with 77 and Spain with 75 daily doses per 1000 inhabitants remain far behind the European champion Portugal with 103.6 units. On the one hand, we find these figures quite astounding, but yet, …

Saturday, 17th October 2020 There are topics of far more importance than Covid-19 or an election featuring Donald Duck. I myself, for example, would be interested in knowing what plans we are making for the future of humankind and what we refer to as “our economy”? This is a fundamental question that has to be addressed and answered. 2020 is the year to take a break, to give ourselves time for some fundamental thinking about certain issues: whether, and, if so, how, ecology and the economy can be made to work together. It is interesting to observe how the contents …

Saturday, 10th October 2020 … there was a beautiful valley, with a hard-to-pronounce name, Esgravatadouro, and a brook running through it. This rivulet provided water for the many trees and plants growing in the fertile soil around it. In 2018, a devastating fire killed off over 80% of those trees and shrubs: carob trees, umbrella pines, cedars, junipers and many more, thousands of different species. Some managed to survive. This is how Nature works, keeping seeds and roots in the ground, ready to help the landscape burst to life again next spring. ECO123 decided to reforest this valley, planting 1001 …

Saturday, 3rd October 2020 by Uwe Heitkamp This week, Europe’s largest airline, Lufthansa, took an important decision that is attracting attention all over Europe. The airline’s flight academy based in Bremen is recommending that 700 trainee pilots interrupt their training because there will be no need for new pilots over the next few years. Lufthansa wants to take 150 aeroplanes out of operation on a permanent basis, and consequently now has too many pilots on board. It will be a long time before these pilots retire and before any new pilots will need to be contracted. How is TAP (Ryanair …

Saturday, 26th September 2020 Germany has been using a highly successful bottle deposit system since 2003 to help cut down on plastic waste and increase recycling rates. A line of people in front of a deposit machine in a supermarket is perfectly normal with customers inserting their glass bottles, plastic bottles or beer crates before a receipt is printed, allowing them to recoup their money at the checkout. Currently, every glass bottle carries an eight cent charge while plastic ones are 25 cents. While the scheme has had the side effect of pushing disadvantaged members of society to root through …

Saturday, 19 th September 2020 Let’s get this straight! Among the many items on the news agenda this week, there were two that stood out in particular. Tourism restrictions due to the pandemic are having their first positive effects on the climate. Representatives of Porto’s Association of Coach Companies (ARP) pointed out, in a press release, that their business depends on group activities, excursions, tourist visits, coach trips and transfers to hotels and the airport. There are more than 2,000 coaches and 2,500 drivers that have been left idle over the past 180 days, and are likely to remain so. …

Saturday 12 th September 2020 Yesterday the ECO123 team founded the new cooperative ESGRAVATADOURO CRL. The aim of this organisation is to offer individuals a simple and effective solution to enable them to become active against climate change. To this end, the KYOTO climate protection platform has been developed, where users can find out about their possibilities of influencing climate change and becoming directly active. In order to ensure that the effects of climate change that are already underway can be controlled for future generations and that the basis of human life continues to exist, it is necessary to rethink …

Saturday 29th August 2020 Is there life after death? Heike Lange probably knows the answer now. It’s painful. This is the second person who’s close to me and who, after going into hospital, without being diagnosed as having a heart attack that wasn’t diagnosed , ended up dying of a second heart attack at home. The doctors who work in this sick health system, sent her home with a handful of pills because they are either overworked or incompetent. One thing is certain: life before death, in Portugal, seems to becoming less and less healthy. It was the forest fire …