A better place we are leaving them – Revel Barker
If I understand the plot correctly, the root of this crazy idea that we will reduce emissions and create clean air in a given period is that we will leave Malta “a better place for our grandchildren”.
(Let’s forget, for a moment, that if the Maltese islands were totally free of emissions, even uninhabited, and covered with green forests, it wouldn’t make a single blow of difference to the world climate while China and India they keep pumping smoke: we’re talking, here, about Malta at least contributing its part.)
Define ‘better place’.
Our grandchildren (or great-grandchildren) can look around and ask: “Is this what they call a better place? Because it is in no way as good as the place where they grew up. And now they are pretending that they tried to leave us better?”
They can look at old family photos and see the Maltese islands when they were perhaps at their best. Less cars, less people, less muck. More greenery everywhere, more space in general, no rush.
Far fewer tourists. Fishing and farming were the main industries. Everyone seemed to have a piece of land, somewhere, or a pike. Or both.
A few ambitious families moved to Commonwealth countries (or the United States), made a comparative fortune and returned, often to build homes for themselves. The academically inclined went to university here, then went to England (mostly, because they had inherited the language) returning as highly skilled doctors and surgeons, creating a local health system that we are still proud of. The young people took up jobs as stewards on passing cruise liners, learning skills that led to employment in top hotel management throughout Europe.
The rest, who had neither the will nor perhaps the opportunity to do anything about their living conditions, seemed content to remain where they were. There were no cries of poverty but there was much saving to be seen.
Are you better off as a result of all this development?– Revel Barker
There were fewer cars, so people walked; there were bars and cafes but no fast food; there was much less obesity. There was not much ‘development’ (not even in the vocabulary, in those times): people often built for themselves, with the help of friends: they had skills. Everyone could see the sea, if they wanted. But then everyone helped everyone if there was a problem. It was the nature of the people.
Is that the kind of better world, the better place, that we will be leaving for our grandchildren? Not a bit of it.
Who messed it all up, then? I would say that it was, and still is, the current generation of parents, who are the children of the grandparents of this generation.
There are developers, and there are the rest of us; and the tourist industry, and the rest of us.
Are you better off as a result of all this development? Neither am I. Do you benefit from tourism? No; neither do I. But some people benefit from both industries and they run the place. Is it in their interest to make Malta a ‘better place’?
The easiest, of course, is to blame foreigners for all Malta’s ills. They brought jobs, which needed more people which (apparently) meant more immigrants; more workers need more house building and then they can afford to buy cars that they need to drive to Gozo – where there are already more vehicles than people – every weekend… they pollute the atmosphere. How dare those who are not Maltese come here, with their money and work for the natives? Why don’t they go back where they came from?
And when these investors in our infrastructure are gone… we will be left with an archipelago with no emissions, anything remotely similar to what we knew, all those years ago when it was actually a better place, indeed , one of the best? Have you ever found out, where do I live? Or will it continue as it started, getting worse every year?
For this, the way we are going, it looks like it is the current inheritance of the grandchildren.
Revel Barker is a former Fleet Street reporter and long-term resident of Gozo.
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