The landscape devastation that lies ahead for the territory of Sardinia due to the ongoing wind and photovoltaic assault requires us to continue to inform the community of which we are part of the serious damage for current and future generations.

The issue is of such vital importance that the position taken with editorials, investigations and television debates reflects the task of information to stimulate the ruling classes for the concrete defense of landscape assets. The editorial group has carried out and carries out with constancy, in freedom and independence, its role of criticism and proactive stimulus for a high and noble cause, hopefully also shared by pro-tempore political decision-makers: the defense of Sardinia from speculative aggression on wind and photovoltaic power.

We would have preferred to record the transparent and sincere desire to concretely stop the ongoing assault on the landscape.

This is not the case, despite the appreciable efforts made evident by the amendment to the first but also useless provision presented by the Council. It is not because the amendment contains openings into which speculators will slip undisturbed, who will be able to say that they have, in spite of themselves, legitimately devastated the territory by virtue of the rules that we ourselves have given ourselves and offered to them. In this regard, the expressed position of the President of the Valle d'Aosta Region, also autonomous, in defense of an in-house regional company that intends to install a wind farm between Sindia and Pozzomaggiore, applies to all. That President says that "the project was presented in compliance with the law" . Here, not on top of its equally windy snow-capped mountains.

History will judge

History will judge everyone on moral, political, economic and social responsibility, and the judgment of condemnation is a given for those who are responsible for the disaster, through sloth, incompetence, resignation or, worse, connivance and convenience.

We will continue to disseminate through our media, with 1.1 million daily contacts, insights, investigations, analyzes and every fact relevant to the defense of the wonderful but also vulnerable Sardinia, still prey to the appetites of speculators always at work here. We have already said and written that there is no more time for hypocrisies, salaams and cunning typical of the old and cloying politics, a contributing cause of the risk of deformation, decay and destruction of the island landscape.

The radical change promised in the electoral campaign cannot translate into passively allowing the destruction of the landscape, a precious collective asset to comfort the spirit that contemplates it and of inestimable economic value for the attraction it exerts in those who visit us. Nor can it mean allowing the sell-off of collectively owned public companies (banks, as happened, or airports, as could happen).

Is there, or not, the iron political will of the regional government bodies to avoid the devastation of Sardinia's landscape?

This is the question.

The facts

Let's look at the facts, naked and raw, at the origin of today's troubles.

1 – In 1975, with the new rules implementing the special Statute of the Autonomous Region of Sardinia (RAS), the powers it had exercised until then were transferred by the State. Among others, drafting and approval of Territorial Landscape Plans, for which the region " will be able to avail itself... of the collaboration of state bodies" ;

2 – In 2007, President Soru, without a resolution from the Council or even from the Council, signed the surrender by signing a deed of submission replacing the verb “may” with “shall” , as reiterated by the Constitutional Court in an exemplary sentence published in December 2021. From there the emptying of the power of the RAS in landscape matters and the obligation of co-planning with the State. This is the same State that today imposes the prevalence of wind and photovoltaic energy on the landscape, cultural and identity assets, including Saccargia, Nuraghi, etc.

3 – In 2021 the infamous Draghi Decree, Minister Cingolani, Deputy Minister of that government Alessandra Todde, with delegation to the activities relating to the Interministerial Committee for the Ecological Transition, has among other things established that "moratoriums or suspensions of the terms of the authorization procedures”; and again: "areas not included among the suitable areas cannot be declared unsuitable for the installation of renewable energy production plants". It also allowed the upgrading of existing wind farms, thus opening up the possibility of replacing 50 meter high blades with others towering over 200 metres. The beauty of Saccargia will therefore succumb, together with sites of archaeological and identity value not included among those restricted due to the culpable forgetfulness of the State itself, as clarified by the recent sentence of the Sardinia Regional Administrative Court, despite itself. The procedural impositions in favor of speculation imposed by this Decree are very serious: they sweep away any regulatory resistance that is not constitutionally protected;

4 – The Region's recent favorable vote expressed at the joint State-Regions conference on the Government decree on suitable areas - but even unsuitable areas can become suitable! – favored the imposition on Sardinia of 6.2 Gigawatts (GW), immediately accepted by the RAS, to be produced on the island by 2030. The positive vote also cleared Off Shore wind power in our seas, effectively without limits. The quantity assigned, and accepted as a minimum of 6.2 GW, is already triple compared to the needs of 1.6 million inhabitants, which is also dramatically decreasing. To say how good we were: Veneto (4.8 million inhabitants) was assigned 5.7 GW; Lazio (5 million inhabitants) 3.9 GW; Lombardy (10 million inhabitants) 8.6 GW; Campania (5.6 million) 3.9 GW. Their energy-intensive industrial activities are, among other things, much more prosperous than our own, which have crashed here precisely due to the excessive cost of energy due to the absence (due to renunciation) of methane, which is instead present in all Italian and most European regions. Whoever decided to bury Galsi and the more recent Snam backbone, already set up for hydrogen and at zero cost to the regional budget, will have thought that all the others are really clueless, that is, stupid, poor things, unlike us!!!

Unfortunately, there will not be a new opportunity, having already wasted two.

Incidentally: the carbon atom, present in all fossil fuels, when burned combines with oxygen and forms carbon dioxide (CO2), or carbon dioxide, the main cause of air pollution, the greenhouse effect and an increase in temperature of the planet. Among fossil fuels, the methane molecule, composed of 4 hydrogen atoms and just one carbon, is the most suitable for the energy transition towards hydrogen (H), the most abundant energy source in the universe, which when burned emits water vapor and zero harmful emissions. Everyone has methane, we don't. We preferred to keep bills 30-40% more expensive for families and businesses!!!

5 – The presentation by the Regional Council of the so-called moratorium dates back to last April, which was expressly prohibited by the Draghi Decree, well known to the President, about the ineffectiveness of which this newspaper has written and rewritten. The same council presented an amendment which effectively replaces it and which, although appreciable for the effort made, will not prevent the havoc.

6 – In fact, the right to legislate is being renounced by virtue of the primary and exclusive competence reserved to the RAS in urban planning matters, according to art. 3 letter f) of the Autonomous Statute dating back to 1948, a solution proposed and suggested here by Mauro Pili and by the writer in the previous editorial. From the maps of the RAS itself it appears that as much as 98.8% of the territory is subjected to constraints of various kinds, constraints that an urban planning law would protect by prohibiting the installation of wind and photovoltaic parks in the restricted areas, just as it protects agricultural areas from the construction of villas with swimming pools or volumetric increases in historic centres. Prohibitions that no one - State, Superintendencies, Ministries, Judges - has ever found fault with.

If not exercised, this would be the umpteenth renunciation of an exclusive statutory competence while scandal is raised over the introduction of Differentiated Autonomy in favor of the northern regions. We have to ask ourselves what autonomy we want to talk about in a serious way, here, if we don't even exercise the constitutionally protected one that would prevent the landscape destruction of the Island. And what hearing can grievances towards the Government and Parliament have to protect our autonomy, without causing hilarity in those who will listen.

7 – The intention to make the "landscape" rule attributable to co-planning with the State prevail to the detriment of the primary, statutory, urban planning rule, protected by the Constitution and also recently confirmed by the Supreme Court, makes any provision aimed at saving the regional landscape heritage, inherited from our ancestors and which we have the duty to hand over, intact, to our descendants.

8 - The procedure for the extension of the PPR to the internal areas proposed by the Committee for Insularity - acceptable if it also corrects certain absurdities of the current one, dating back to the first decade of the century - would be long and complex for the necessary listening and gathering of consensus of the local populations affected and would not allow us to resolve today's problem. And in any case the State, in the context of mandatory co-planning, would not allow the protection of identity and landscape assets to be placed before wind and photovoltaic energy.

9 - We must then ask ourselves what trust can be placed in a State that has kept Sardinia on the margins of any serious economic development trend if, even today: the index for energy networks is, here, equal to 35 against 100 for the national team; the index for road networks is, here, 45 compared to 100 for the national one; the index for the railway networks is, here, 15 compared to 100 for the national one; the index for economic-social infrastructures is, here, 66 compared to 100 at the national level. It is truly true that the Perfect Merger of 1847 and the promise to equate the Island with the regions of the continent turned out to be a Perfect Cheat, if we still have this level of backwardness today.

10 – And we still have to ask ourselves what will become of the only realistic locomotive for the development of the economic system based on tourism and related supply chains, also cited by Bank of Italy in the latest annual report, if we allow the proposed ruin of the asset landscape.

In the position assumed we exercise the right/duty of clarity and transparency due to the Sardinian community, which appreciates us for the independence demonstrated and for the respect towards the regional institutions that we want to preserve and support as part of the identity heritage, to be appreciated as worthily representative of the our community.

The future, hope

In conclusion, the hope is that the political and institutional class exercises in a clear, decisive and determined way the prerogative that the Founding Fathers have wisely made available since 1948: exclusive competence in urban planning matters.

If not for love, let it be done for convenience.

Otherwise, it will not be easy to live with our conscience as Sardinians when the effects of today's decisions will be visible to everyone, with children and grandchildren to be directly accountable to, should they see wind turbines appear on the marine horizon of Poetto, Carloforte and of Gallura, or expanses of photovoltaic panels instead of fields of golden wheat.

There are ways to participate intelligently in the energy transition for the benefit of the Sardinian community and not of speculators and they should all be activated. It is nowhere written that we must sacrifice our landscape so that others can continue to pollute the atmosphere undisturbed.

This editorial group will support any action of the regional institutions in defense of Sardinia. And it will continue to support the meritorious action carried out by the Committees that have arisen spontaneously and in growing numbers.

If necessary, as a last option, we will also support the collection of signatures for a popular initiative law.

Sergio Zuncheddu

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