Almost every government minister has mentioned the word “green” in one of his or her latest speeches. Ministers who have nothing to do with the environment have also found a way to say how much Malta needs to become a greener country. It’s as if there was some kind of instruction from above to insist that the islands, after all, are environmentally friendly. The more you say it, the more people believe it, and a lie that is repeated over and over again will be eventually taken as the truth. And, as we know, we’re not short of gullible people.

But, then, the more observant around us, and those who do not carry any partisan flag and can therefore be more objective in their thinking, know that, rather than green, we are just seeing grey.

It’s not the greylisting of Malta by the Financial Action Task Force we’re talking about, although many still feel ashamed that Malta became the first European Union country to be given such dishonour. Thankfully, we have overcome that obstacle, as we have been reintegrated with the good guys, hopefully never to return.

What we have in mind is the spreading of more concrete and bricks – as more and more buildings sprout all over the island, higher, deeper and wider.

We have said it and we continue to say it. Malta has not remained the charming place it used to be not so long ago. People of a certain age will remember Malta as a picturesque country, attractive to the many tourists who visited it and pleasant for the people who reside in it.

It is no longer so. Malta has become too overcrowded, too congested and too ugly to be considered as being attractive as it used to be.

The Malta Developers Association says that it is not worried that the property bubble is about to burst. This means that we are to expect more and more buildings to be constructed in the coming months and years. “For now there is no need to worry about any bubble… almost everything is being sold on plan… very few are the properties that are not being sold on plan,” the president of the MDA said in comments to The Malta Independent.

That may be good news for the developers, but it also means that there will be more grey around us in the next few years.

Even someone as Alfred Sant, who does not shy away from calling a spade a spade, said that he worries that the building of an airstrip in Gozo is just a front for more property. He is convinced that the project will fail and the area will be converted into a residential and commercial block. The former Prime Minister cannot understand why Gozitans are in its favour and, frankly, we agree with him.

There will come a time when we will regret all this. But then it will be too late.