Short Stories

Saturday 6th July 2024. There are no limits to the imagination, are there? I can just envisage the first major European tour operator cancelling all trips to Portugal this year, showing the government that the tourist industry acts responsibly and takes care of its customers – especially in the event of illness. I no longer recommend travelling to Portugal, especially to the Algarve. This is because the government – no matter whether it is socialist or conservative – has run Portugal’s healthcare system into the ground, to such an extent that people no longer dare to become ill. If you …

Saturday 22 June 2024. Continuation of last week’s interview: Eco123: There are still people who don’t care about their ecological footprint. LR: People who really don’t care at all… Eco123: They’re going to eat meat seven days a week, drive diesel cars, fly to Brazil on holiday… and they don’t want to plant trees. What do you do with the opponents who reject your climate plan? LR: Our investment in young people is very important. And there are many thousands of them who are impacted year after year by our work at the Environmental Education Centre and in schools. We …

Saturday, 15th june 2024. Portugal has 308 municipalities. One of them is the medium-sized city of Torres Vedras, located 54 kilometres to the north-west of Lisbon and covering an area of 407 km². This inland municipality has 83,072 inhabitants (Census 2021) and spreads over 13 parishes. The municipal council is led by the Socialist Party and its mayor is Laura Maria Jesus Rodrigues (63). At the beginning of the year, the municipality’s Climate Action Plan was presented to the public at a well-attended meeting in the auditorium of the Environmental Education Centre. The local inhabitants were then given the opportunity …

Saturday 8th june 2024. The Portuguese Society for the Study of Birds (SPEA) is pleased to announce that Rui Borralho was appointed as Executive Director in May. Replacing the outgoing Executive Director, Domingos Leitão, Rui Borralho has enjoyed a solid career and nurtures a fervent passion for nature conservation, bringing with him more than 30 years of experience and a deep dedication to wildlife. With a PhD in Forestry Engineering, specialising in Wildlife Management, from the University of Lisbon’s Instituto Superior de Agronomia, Rui Borralho has always been passionate about nature. ‘It’s a huge responsibility and challenge, and I’m very …

Saturday, 1st june 2024. I got to know Luis Vicente* when he visited me half an eternity ago at the Rotarians in Almancil. It was he who came up with the idea of the theatre bus. ACTA – A Companhia de Teatro do Algarve* – had been given a double-decker bus (VATe), whose MOT had expired, and which was in urgent need of repair. He showed me the vehicle at a garage in Olhão: it had been completely stripped down and was standing on the platform lift; it required a lot of welding work and its load-bearing parts needed to …

Saturday, 25th may 2024. Living, as we are now, in the heat of the climate crisis, when the forest in Portugal is on fire, we know exactly what we have to do to put it out. We call the fire department, and we quickly roll out our own hoses. It’s all quite clear, isn’t it? We don’t wait until 2035 or even longer. We don’t wait to put out the fire. Why is it taking so long to implement the transformation in the energy sector? Solar and wind energy have been around for a long time now, hydroelectricity for centuries. …

Saturday 18th May 2024. The CO2 observatory in space has been in operation since 2023, because what can be measured can be reduced. Until recently, it was always claimed that CO2 could not be seen, smelled, tasted, heard or even touched. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in the USA has the largest collection of geoscientists on the planet. Their mission is to visualise CO2 and function as a key trusted source of comprehensive environmental information about both the current state and the future of the Earth. NASA scientists design, build, launch and operate missions, including satellites, to understand how our …

Saturday 11th May 2024. The history of paper has closely accompanied the development of humankind over the centuries: from the transmission of new knowledge in science and philosophy to the spread of education and the achievement of political and historical awareness through the invention of the printing press. We at ECO123 also print still on paper (The new ECO123 issue 34 will be published shortly) and we always use recycled paper, i.e., paper that has already been used and printed on before. Normally this wastepaper is carefully sorted and shredded, then showoered and turned into a mass of pulp, or …

Saturday 4th May 2024. The way he writes is not as dry as I initially thought. Rather, it is characterised by a highly active scientific competence, coupled with a writer’s finely tuned sense of humour in its practical application. The author does not remain locked away in an ivory tower of theory. As well as providing us with reliable findings, he also takes a look forward at science fiction and a studied glance back into the Earth’s history. The book is interesting and weighs 575 grams. I weighed it on my kitchen scales. It is 21 cm long and 16 …

Saturday 20th April 2024. Do you know the beauty of wild orchids? Have you ever made a tea from lime blossom? Do you know the lavender-scented pillows that help you sleep? Those who love nature move within it carefully and, above all, mindfully. Because two feet can easily trample a valuable plant, a herb or a small, recently-planted tree. In a valley known as Esgravatadouro, the balance of nature was completely destroyed during several forest fires in 2003 and 2018, and, in order to protect the area from further destruction, the publisher of the magazine ECO123 bought the valley and …