I was hardly surprised that land reclamation was among the topics brought up by Lou Bondì in last week’s programme with the Prime Minister. It is set to become the first litmus of the present Government’s conception and valuation of the environment.

By linking land reclamation to employment Muscat gave it what one might call value-by-association

A high-profile litmus too when one considers the likely magnitude of reclamation projects and the fact that there is something biblical and implicitly grandiose about turning sea into dry land.

My guess is also that Joseph Muscat will be reminded that movements and loose coalitions are not the prerogative of electoral campaigns. Early days yet perhaps, but there are indications of a budding environmental movement centred on this issue.

On the one hand it will be ad hoc, a case-specific convergence of people and groups with interests as diverse as seagrass meadows, access to the coast, and the ecology of rock pools. At the same time it will serve to set standards and moulds of environmental thought, activism, and organisation which will overspill the confines of the case and go on to define an era. The gremxula has teeth and will bite, pace Caravaggio.

Recent history provides us with useful examples. The Front Kontra l-Hilton (1995-1998) was one of the first movements of this type. The Hilton was there last time I looked up, and one might say the front was ultimately unsuccessful.

But there was a second closely-related do called the Front Kontra l-Golf Kors (approximately 1999-2004) and to date it’s the Marsa or nothing for the men with clubs. The doubters would do well to read Michael Briguglio’s sustained sociological work on those movements and what they meant and did.

Which is why the Prime Minister’s answer to Bondì’s question is significant. Loosely translated it went as follows: “I imagine there will be those who will kick up a fuss about the loss of a lizard (gremxula) somewhere or other... but my role as Prime Minister is to decide, and decide I will... I am ready to bear the consequences of my decisions.”

There are at least four problems with this blokey and sharp-elbowed piece of statesmanship. The first is that Muscat went on to talk about the economic dividends of such projects. In his own words, “employment doesn’t come from nothing”.

The rhetorical sleight is intriguing. By linking land reclamation to employment Muscat gave it what one might call value-by-association. Unless one is an 18th-century landed aristocrat one is inclined to think of employment as intrinsically a good thing. Certainly the word is dripping with value in a modern economy, and especially so in a context of global recession.

Land reclamation must make do with a rather more dubious reputation. Most people who do not fantasise about wearing a bicorne and establishing a First Empire will probably have mixed feelings about it. Associate it with employment, however, and things change.

Never mind that the link is far from obvious (save for the banal bit that says that it will take X number of workers to dump Y tonnes of material into the sea), or that what seems like a straightforward piece of logic actually ignores a monumental stack of ifs and buts.

The second problem is that Muscat’s answer rather gave the game away. Land reclamation, it seems, is fait accompli. The sequence of events has been scripted and will go as follows:

A surprisingly high number of investors – another value-laden term by the way – will express their interest. (Read: Government generally and Muscat specifically enjoy unprecedented levels of trust, locally and internationally.) The nod will be given.

A bunch of losers and tree-huggers will rally round the hopeless gremxula as they always do, oblivious as they are to development. Government will listen (to the tree-huggers, not to the gremxula).

The consultation will result in a tough and difficult decision in the national interest. The trucks will turn up with their concrete. Bear-like, the Prime Minister will fight the course and bear the consequences of his decision.

Or will he? That, in fact, is the third problem with his answer, that there’s no way he will ever pay the real price – at least not unless he intends to reclaim his own swimming pool. The real price here is environmental damage, and the people who stand to pay it are us. Whatever he says, Muscat is quite simply not in a position to bear the sins of the world on this one.

The fourth problem is the reptile, stupid. This time it was Muscat’s body language that spoke volumes. He looked aside as if to conjure up the most unappetising and pointless of God’s creatures. I seem to remember Nationalist politicians talking about environmentalists and their worthless dudu (worm). Muscat is one up, his paragon of slimy uselessness is the gremxula.

First things first, I feel obliged to put in a good word. Lizards are to my mind among the most successful and charming of God’s designs. They can use their tails as a counterweight to run the equivalent of several miles in seconds, they can survive a parched Maltese summer without recourse to reverse osmosis, and they display highly articulate territorial behaviour.

For those who care to look, they’re also beautiful, infinitely more so any number of Trimalchio’s carbuncles on reclaimed land. If readers will allow me a herpetological liberty, one of my heroes is Calvino’s Mr Palomar, the man who spends his evenings marvelling at a gecko.

The objection is that my private fetishes are just that, and that Messrs Palomar and Muscat are free to argue. Still, the point is that the Prime Minister’s solution to environmental issues is essentially to banalise the natural environment and proceed to let in the bulldozers.

The gremxula (disdain, raised eyebrows, disdain) was the rhetorical device by which he did that. I’m sure the qualified ecologists will come up with a million solid arguments about the broader significance of coastal ecosystems. I can imagine them banging their heads against the wall in despair to see those ecosystems reduced to a stray reptile.

On my part, I resolve to spend more time at Fra Ben in Qawra. The islets happen to be a fantastic place to lie motionless and let the gremxul approach to within a few inches. It’s hardly their fault that the Prime Minister can’t see the point.

mafalzon@hotmail.com