Date: 2024-09-27 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00013824 | |||||||||
Spain, Morocco | |||||||||
Burgess COMMENTARY | |||||||||
In 2014, amidst a large controversy, a Spanish TV station created a fictional crime drama, Plastic Sea (Mar de Plastico), that highlighted much of the crime, labor and environmental chaos surrounding the greenhouse farms. A 2015 report in NaturPhilosophie noted that, in addition to the massive human rights problems, the area is plagued with depleted aquifers, the largest desalination plant in Europe to keep water flowing into the greenhouses, and rising cancer rates due to pesticide exposure among workers. Waste from the 'farms' is reported to run off into the Mediterranean Sea, including the chemical waste, plastic waste and human waste of the workers. Entire industries have popped up in the area simply to make the massive amount of plastic for the greenhouses which has a short lifespan and is sometimes discarded, strewn across the landscape or washed into the sea. Some observers call it a $1 billion 'miracle economy,' while others call it the 'exploitation of cheap labor with no rights' and 'environmental devastation.' The swath of greenhouses is massive enough to be seen from space and has been described as a 'Dystopian Sea.' Image of greenhouses of Almeria, Spain from space. Photo credit: NASA The area is so large that it actually creates its own 'albedo effect' because it reflects the sun's rays and cools the atmosphere. Scientists claim that local temperatures have actually decreased by 1 degree since 1980, while other areas of Spain have increased by 1 to 3 degrees over the same time period. All of the negative publicity has caused the greenhouse corporations, as well as the local governments, to combat the tide of news stories with greenwashed news releases (like this video) that, among other things, even brag about the albedo effect by saying that the greenhouses serve a public good by cooling the climate on the Southern Iberian Peninsula. The controversy continues to escalate month-by-month as the number of greenhouses increase and stretch farther and farther up and down the coastline. As we drove through and beyond El Ejido, the greenhouses continued to stretch along the road in La Rabita and Carchuna. Finally, in the tourist area of Nerja, we could see no more greenhouses—from the road at least—and a sense of relief set in. The drive was very unsettling, causing a tightness in our chests and cringe on our faces—the continual glare of the white and the smell of plastic and chemicals gave us headaches that we tried to wash away with long gulps of bottled water. As we dined that evening in Nerja, we ordered a salad the same as we had in restaurants all across southern Europe. The romaine lettuce, bell peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers and carrots took on an all new look and flavor now colored by our education about the source of the food. The waitress proudly exclaimed that the salad was 'locally grown.' The next morning we rented standup paddleboards and paddled along the cliffs just north of Nerja. The Mediterranean Sea was quiet and crystalline clear. A few hundred yards north of Nerja we paddled under a beautiful waterfall careening over the cliff above and splashing into the Sea. The fresh water felt wonderful washing over my head, clearing the dystopian sea of plastic from my brain. But then we paddled a few hundred yards farther south and saw greenhouses perched on the cliffs above and stretching intermittently along the coast. It seemed like the greenhouses were everywhere. When I got back to our hotel that night I looked on Google Earth, and indeed, the stream from the waterfall ran right through acres of greenhouses up on the cliffs that we couldn't see from the water below. Was that lovely waterfall actually a toxic stream of runoff from the plastic greenhouses? NaturPhilosophie reports that tens of millions of acres of land across the planet are now covered by plastic greenhouses or plastic mulch directly on top of ground. Eighty five percent of those greenhouses are in Asia. The future presented by the greenhouses of Almeria, Spain, is not a clean eco-tech environment like in the Biosphere project in the desert of Arizona that Americans are familiar with. Conversely, it's an environmental dystopia filled with slave-like labor, chemical-laden food and intense heat. Is this the new wave of farming? An apocalyptic world covered by plastic may await us. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gary Wockner, PhD, is an international environmental writer and activist based in Colorado. Contact: Gary@GaryWockner.com. |