Portugal was a poor country with a hardworking people who carefully took care of their resources.
Families grew vegetables, harvested fruits and nuts, rode bicycles. They were happy, there was plenty of gold in the central bank, many kept savings as jewellery, but there was no freedom of speech.
Climate change is arguably the biggest threat that humanity has ever faced and so perhaps it should have repeatedly dominated the headlines this past year, if not the past decade. It didn’t because discussion on the subject is so confusing and implicitly terrifying that many people don’t even want to think about it.
Academic debate rages about whether or not the globe really is warming – or if so, why, by how much, and what should be done about it.
Our Spanish cousins are at it again. In addition to harrying the UK over Gibraltar, Madrid now has presented a proposal to the United Nations to extend the Spanish continental shelf, at Portugal’s expense, in its aim to secure gas and oil exploration rights.
Spain claims sovereignty over the natural resources in a maritime area of nearly 300 square kilometres west of the Canaries which covers Portugal’s ‘Islas Selvagens.’
Rallies are being organised across Portugal and around the world this weekend to promote action rather than words in tackling the problem of climate change.
The international mobilisation effort “to build a cleaner, fairer, safer world” is being staged to coincide with the United Nations summit meeting on climate change in New York.
This image shows, what seems to be, a Jack-up Support Platform seen from Praia da Rocha in Portimao since the 27th of August - It all started with a message on Facebook, asking if they had started with the exploration of oil and gas, as there is a platform offshore just off Praia da Rocha. This was followed by one of our members asking if a vessel they had seen at sea could be a seismic survey ship?
Portugal’s former government was very pro renewable energy. Unfortunately with the current rulers we are not that lucky !
10 years ago Prime Minister Socrates started with EU funds the “Feed in Tariff” (FIT), to give back to the grid at very interesting prices of up to €0,68 per kwatt. However the current government turned around all benefits and decided that renewable energy should not be rewarded anymore.
ASMAA announced on July 20th (2014) that it is restructuring its board. It is typical that as an organisation grows out of its start-up phase and progresses into the phase of expansion and growth, that there will be a need for restructuring. ASMAA is no different!
Without a doubt, this restructuring is vital for growth if we want to create a more agile, effective and efficient organization. The original governance structure is not functioning as planned, and restructure is necessary if we are to re-adjust to the constantly challenging environment that we operate in.
We are running out of the natural resources and to reach them is becoming more and more difficult and expensive. The result is simple: Energy prices are only going up !
Next to the ever rising energy prices we are also subjective to the increasing VAT on top of that. So as soon as we consume electricity we automatically pay 23% extra !!
