“The Contribution of Aigina to the International Campaign against Aerosol spraying and ‘Geoengineering’”
7th March 2010 Municipal Theatre of Aigina
Ιntroduction
W. Hall
Thank you for coming to today’s meeting.
I would like from the outset to put forward my view on how we should best go about having a successful and focused exchange of views. Because the recent Climategate scandal has strengthened the hand of the so-called climate change “skeptics”, this makes it even more urgent, in my view, to work out some guidelines for the discussion. My proposal is that we should not discuss whether climate change is a reality, or to what extent, if it exists, it is caused by humans. Neither should we discuss whether chemtrails are a reality and whether what we see in the sky are really just the condensation trails that have been seen in the sky since the beginning of jet air travel. These two views, that climate change is real but that chemtrails aren’t, or that chemtrails are real but climate change isn’t, are heard in the context of familiar discussions in the mass media, with the result that many people have relevant opinions, and so, as they imagine, relevant knowledge. If they express these opinions here, we will certainly end up having the same arguments that are already going on everywhere, and there will be nothing new or original about our meeting today.
Perhaps some people aim to present documentation, photographs, etc. of chemtrails. I would ask, however, that any such presentations should not be the starting point for a discussion on whether chemtrails exist or don’t exist. The video from Copenhagen with which we commence today’s programme does not include a stance on whether chemtrails exist or don’t exist. The analysis it makes of geoengineering is an analysis of scientific proposals. This approach, I believe, is the best if we want to end up with decisions that can be implemented within the framework of action by active citizens.
Let us then proceed to the theme of Aigina’s contribution to the international campaign against aerosol spraying and geoengineering. It is true that in 2003, as a result of the initiative of the then municipal councilor Nektarios Koukoulis Aigina, became the only town in Europe to have a council that had voted on the spraying which is called “chemtrails”. This information was picked up by the Austrian journalist Chris Haderer, who in 2005 wrote a book on the subject, mentioning Aigina. More recently it was also commented on by the newspaper “Saronic News”. It was also noted by Peter Vereecke, former mayor of the town Evergem in Belgium which is shortly organizing an international conference on geoengineering in the city of Ghent in Belgium. Peter Vereecke stated that “the symbolic and historic significance of Aigina is obvious. You have been at the epicenter of democracy for 2,500 years. Your municipal council is the only one to have asked questions about the aerial spraying and initiated action. You are also the founders of the Capodistrias-Spinelli-Europe initiative, which has the potential to become an overall proposal for the establishment of Citizens’ Europe. It is based on the same principles as our own Belfort citizens’ movement. I gladly become a signatory and I plan to invite all the members of the Belfort group to do the same.”
Today’s meeting sends a message to the Belfort citizens’ movement in Belgium, in which we thank them for their recognition of Aigina’s contribution so far to the pan-European mobilization we hope now to be initiating. Our objective is that geoengineering and other such censored subjects should be integrated into a framework of rational, accepted and institutionalized political discussion and action in Europe, something to serve as example to the rest of the world.
I would like to ask Nektarios Koukoulis to extend to us his greetings and share his thoughts on the seven years that have passed since his intervention in the Aigina Municipal Council, and the prospects which are hopefully now opening.