Various stakeholders, inside and outside the island, have criticized and opposed the position taken by L'Unione Sarda with investigations into wind and photovoltaic energy, military servitude, sewage sludge from the continent, transport and airport monopolies and oligopolies, and so on.

Not a few legal actions have been brought aimed at limiting the freedom of the press and of criticism, however many rejected by sentences in our favor.

Newspapers, and the press in general, also have the task of drawing attention to facts that would otherwise remain unknown to most people, and contribute, as in our case, to increasing awareness of the need to defend Sardinia's interests.

For this reason I feel the duty to explain to our readers the reasons for the clear and coherent editorial line taken, first of all on energy and landscape issues: contrast to the invasion of wind turbines on land and at sea and photovoltaic panels to spread in our countryside .

The landscape has inestimable economic value, as well as aesthetic, because it is a scarce resource, of limited availability and not reproducible, if compromised.

We have so far allowed to cut down our forests to make them sleepers to build decent railway lines always and only on the Continent, but not here; to smear parts of our territory with polluting and toxic chemical and petrochemical waste; to bomb and gut portions of territory of extraordinary beauty with out-of-control military exercises; to fill landfills, reserved for local waste, with stinking sewage sludge from outside; to spread photovoltaic panels in the countryside and on the roofs of fake greenhouses, just to enrich people who, with agriculture, own zero plus zero; to plant mammoth wind turbines, to disfigure the gentle profile of our hills and the ridges of our mountains for the sole benefit of borrowers looking for conspicuous public contributions, with ministerial and even local connivances; to allow transportation oligopolies to regulate entry and exit from our House according to their convenience; to hand over the keys to the entrance and exit doors to a budding monopoly.

Having allowed all of this, we are faced with projects presented for the installation of innumerable wind turbines three hundred meters high and more in untouched hills and mountains, many in the vicinity of monuments of our Nuragic civilization; and as many to be installed in the sea, to lock us tightly within the island border, until now free to contemplate the marine horizon, an example of moving beauty and harmony of nature.

The multiplication of gigantic iron blades to be planted in our soil, and of photovoltaic panels to be installed in our countryside, would lead to the production of energy defined as renewable sufficient to satisfy the energy needs of fifty million inhabitants, Sardinia having only 1.6 million however declining.

Already today, almost half of the island's energy needs is satisfied by the production of energy from renewable sources, so much so that one wonders what is the origin of the claim to satisfy, here, the energy needs from renewables of many regions of the continent, reluctant to smear theirs with territory.

If they produced it at home, their share, without harming our landscape, as required by national and Community standards!

The assault on our last resort, moreover for a plate of lentils, if implemented would harm the growth prospects of the weak Sardinian economy, to be based mainly on the tourist industry, due to the compromise of the attractiveness of naturalistic and monumental, cultural and artificial due to human intervention on nature. Collective heritage rather worthy of protection, as is done with the most precious things.

The landscape, extended, being an island, to the portions of the territorial sea, must be protected and preserved also for future generations, powerless today because they are still absent, to defend their right to enjoy the natural beauties enjoyed by the current ones. It is necessary and therefore, it is urgent to activate tools for landscape protection, management and planning, taking into account the needs and rights of citizens to choose what, how and why to protect, bearing in mind the feeling of identity of people in relation to places, as lived and used also from their ancestors. Without imposing equal measures for all landscapes regardless of the specific characteristics of each one, a prerequisite for sustainable economic and social development.

It is urgently necessary to place a constitutional embankment to attack our landscape, an economic and aesthetic heritage of inestimable value and ultimately, a great resource still available on which to create wealth and spread well-being in Sardinia.

The holders of political and bureaucratic power have the responsibility of activating the revision procedure of the Regional Landscape Plan (PPR) left half-finished, now dated and controversial as regards the effects on the economy, and to extend it to the whole island territory, including the sea and its horizon, in compliance with the principle of subsidiarity and with the sharing of communities of citizens, businesses and local institutions, locally applying national and supranational principles and norms.

Not necessarily kneeling.

The elaboration, accompanied by national and community resources, should be oriented towards degraded areas of the urban suburbs, abandoned industrial and mining sites and coasts devastated by second homes of little architectural value, as well as valuable inland areas, rich in naturalistic beauties and identity productions . In the meantime, pending planning to protect the landscape, the bodies and institutions in charge, first and foremost the Region and Municipalities, should fully exercise the prerogatives assigned to them for the governance of the territory, challenging at all levels the deeds issued by anyone to the detriment of the 'Island.

These are the reasons for the position taken by this newspaper in defense of Sardinia's interests.

The Unione Sarda has always followed and supported businesses and entrepreneurs who intend to activate productive investments to create employment, and will continue to oppose purely speculative ones that diverge from the interests of our community.

Sergio Zuncheddu

Publisher L'Unione Sarda

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