A group of 70 Portuguese scientists demanded, in an open letter, the end of drilling and exploration for oil and gas on the Portuguese coast and sea, from the Algarve to Porto.
"We have come to affirm that it is necessary that all contracts in force must be terminated as of now and that new license issues be refused, in order to avoid irreparable damage to the economy, the environment and their communities", say the signatories, who came from from various scientific domains and associated with institutions across the country.
The document's authors emphasize that the scientific communities are moving internationally and are preparing for public demonstrations in several countries, including Portugal, against the exploitation of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions. One of the examples is the March for Climate, scheduled for next Saturday, in Aljezur, Lisbon and Porto.
Recalling the debates on climate change provoked by the climate summits and stressing the inadequacy of measures taken so far and the disregard for the agreed targets, the scientists say that there is now an agreement of the majority of the scientific community on the «urgency of ending emissions of greenhouse gases'.
«The existing knowledge allows to abandon fossil fuels in favor of clean energy, innovations in this area are constant. Human-induced climate change is a societal problem that science can and has been responding to,” says the open letter.
The document also warns of the reconfiguration of the relationship between global and national powers after the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, the alliance with Vladimir Putin, Russian president, and the rise of the far right in Europe, «the which aggravates the situation in a worrying way'.
“For peoples, the threats to peace, to permanence in the territory, to health, to food, to education are increasing every day. There is also the insufficiency of scientific investment in many countries, which threatens the work of scientists and further isolates it, socially, from fair solutions to the major problems that require the intervention of various sciences», warn the scientists.
The exploitation of fossil fuels in Portugal is, underline the signatories of the open letter, «one of the great problems that we have to face from the point of view of citizenship and of the sciences that we do».
“As scientists we know that the persistence of a carbon predatory economy makes the national political commitments assumed at the Climate Summits unfeasible and defrauds the expectations of the populations. We know that it destroys territories, seas and rivers, the atmosphere, irreplaceable forms and chains of life, rapidly approaching a point of no return,” they add.
Now, argue the scientists, «with this exploitation, populations do not gain neither work, nor health, nor a place to live. And we know that there are alternatives».
Therefore, they conclude, this is «the moment to express our opposition, socially responsible and based on the best scientific knowledge, to the drilling and exploration of oil and gas on the Portuguese coast and sea, from the Algarve to Porto» .
Click here to read the full Open Letter and meet all signatories
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