‘He who controls the water, controls the world.’ This was the slogan of Rango, the 2011 American computer-animated family action comedy western film about a chameleon that takes on the greedy mayor of a small western town. The mayor is in control of the water. In this movie, water was the currency and the way wealth was measured.
Repetition will be the name of the game. Who wins this war wins the election- Fr Joe Borg
In the past 20 years or so, many have been forecasting that nations will soon be going to war over water sources. This life-giving substance is becoming scarce, and in the Middle East and some African countries it could potentially be a resource one could fight to death to possess.
On the other hand, electricity is not likely to similarly be a potential cause of war. Most websites given by Google Scholar for ‘wars fought because of electricity’ referred mainly to the debates about who the father of electricity really is. I found nothing about potential wars for electricity supplies, though truth be said, water and electricity go together in more sense than one. The first is not only a deadly conductor but also a generator of the second.
Malta could possibly do a first: there is an electoral ‘war’ because of electricity, and to a much lesser extent, water. The Labour Party has been promising us that this will be its battle cry. On Tuesday, it started to reveal what has so far been hidden. Come Wednesday, more revelations followed; still others are promised. Will it be the War of the Seven Veils?
Water and electricity were the rallying call of the Labour Party for the 2008 general elections. Alfred Sant promised to halve the electricity bills. Come 2013 Joseph Muscat is promising to reduce them by a quarter.
Water seems to be the Cinderella of the campaign promise as a much smaller reduction, that is five per cent, is on the cards. For Sant, the halving of the bills was a political priority. For Muscat, their quartering looks like a business proposition that creates a win-win situation for the Maltese public and investors.
As The Times said editorially (January 9), questions there are aplenty, and credible answers are awaited. The critics of the PL are pointing towards the rider that is added to the promise: only if the private sector butts in with some €300 million will the government then top up almost another €80 million. Muscat denies there is a done deal while emphasising that many investors are interested.
Critics also say that the PL has not explained how international markets will be persuaded to keep the price of gas the same for the next decade. Muscat says all was catered for and estimates are conservative.
Finance Minister Tonio Fenech said the land where the proposed gas tanks are to be built is reclaimed land that cannot withstand the weight of the tanks. Muscat’s only answer was that the minister must have had a Marian apparition.
This can hardly be considered to be a credible answer. The timeframes proposed have been the point of greatest contention. Many doubting Thomases are totting statutory timeframes to show that the PL timeframe projections are not realistic.
The proposal will stand or fall depending on whether people consider the answers given by the PL today as more credible than the answers that had been given by the PL prior to the 2008 election.
The debate about these questions and the answers thereto will fill many a TV and radio programme and kilometres of newsprint. Repetition will be the name of the game. Who wins this war wins the election.
While in Malta the energy war can make or break a political party, others around the world are saying the result of the energy war can make all the difference between the salvation or the destruction of the planet.
Danny Kennedy’s Rooftop Revolution: How Solar Power Can Save Our Economy – and Planet – from Dirty Energy has just been published. It looks at the sun as the Egyptian Pharaohs used to do, that is, their saviour. It also considers rooftops to be the temple of the Sun God.
Kennedy promises his followers and the clients of his company great reductions in their utility bills, together with the added value of being part of the great revolution ‘green is clean’.
For Kennedy, the anti-Christ of the Rooftop Revolution is King Kong. He does not refer to the colossal giant gorilla who takes a shine to the female blonde star of a film crew that goes to the tropical Skull Island for an exotic location shoot. The 21st-century monster is a hybrid of the magnates controlling coal, oil, nuclear and gas energy supplies. Kennedy is not promising to battle King Kong, Churchill-fashion on the beaches and the streets but on the rooftops.
Kennedy is trying to break the power of the electricity grids, change consumers into producers and get polluters to pay.
In the foreword of the book, General Wesley Clark compares the solar revolution to Henry Ford’s development of mass production or Thomas Edison’s invention of electricity.
The solar revolution has made inroads in Malta. The Government boasts that 67,000 square metres of public space have already been given to private companies for photovoltaic panels; millions of euros in subsidies to private homes for the installation of PV panels; an energy audit in Gozo homes and the promise of solar farms.
The good news is that the Labour Party has given the thumbs-up to these developments. This agreement augurs well for the solar revolution.
Meanwhile the energy war is still in full bloom, or should I write boom?
• The following is a de rigueur comment. I wrote a similar one before the 2008 general election and probably wrote another one before the 2003 elections.
How can any self-respecting journalist accept to be reduced to a glorified time-keeper during the political broadcasts organised by the Broadcasting Authority?
Asking questions, not time-keeping, is the essence of journalism. This is incredibly demeaning.
joseph.borg@um.edu.mt