Mr C Galea has blown my cover! By means of an incredible feat of deduction he has established a link between my “ultra fierce promotion of wind of energy” and a “pecuniary or financial interest in wind farms” (Electric bicycles, TMID, 7 April). Having now been challenged with this accusation twice, I suppose there is no harm in stating that I became a billionaire from brokering the installation of wind turbines in the USA and other major countries including Spain, Denmark and Germany. And that I recently returned to Malta in the hope of making the odd million or two here, but with little success so far.
If Mr Galea wants further information about my “pecuniary interests” he is welcome to read “Towards a Low Carbon Society: the Nations Health, Energy Security and Fossil Fuels” (available on request from [email protected]), of which I was the lead author. This report will doubtless provide him with evidence that I also have a pecuniary interest in solar water heating, photovoltaic panels, marine electric cable installations, electric cars, electric minibuses, trolley buses etc., etc.
As to my letter (TMID, 28 March), it referred to electric bicycles, of course, as indicated by its title. I still maintain that any trend to low pollution travel should not be discouraged by the introduction of limitations but I would agree that a maximum capacity for street-legal use without insurance should be defined for petrol driven bicycles. Youngsters should anyway be encouraged to use a pedal-driven bicycle to exercise their own muscles rather than use a motorised bicycle; to this end, setting a lower age limit for motorised bicycle use would be a good idea.
One final comment: a two-stroke 50 cc petrol engine can hardly be called ‘polluting’ when compared to the high engine capacities of modern cars of around 1800cc or so. ‘Pollution’ and carbon emissions from a tiny bicycle engine are negligible. If a petrol driven bicycle is used instead of a car, the saving for the environment is therefore still enormous.
G G Debono
Sliema