Unintentionally, the green topic again appears in my weekend blog for second time. The reason is simple: green things are happening in Bulgaria, which makes me happy, but also alert that some of them might only use the colour green to paint themselves green as nature, but are in fact green as money. And create further problems.

Some time ago, when a friend of mine from the recently established new green party Zelenite (Bulgarian Greens) told me that he and the other environmental activists are planning to get into the politics with a new party, I reacted as many of my acquaintances now react: “One more party? Who needs this?“

I suggested they melt into the Green Party, already in existance since 1989, but the person I am talking about, who also has a long experience in the environmental protests since the very beginning, told me this party is not the thing they want to transform into.

Anther member of Zelenite recently changed his car engine to one that uses methane, as he could not separate that easily from the comfort of driving his vehicle, but at least tries to make it in the most environmentally friendly way. The same person spends any free day at his village house, now transforming it into an energy-efficient place to live, with solar panels and other environmental improvements.

Another member of the newly formed party is the person who organised all protests to support the full list of Natura 2000 environmental network to be approved by the Cabinet. He stood every Thursday morning for one year in front of the Cabinet building, organising people and inventing various creative ways to express that Bulgaria needs to preserve its wild nature to be even completive on the foreign market, if you wish.

On May 23, one of the three deputy chairpersons of Zelenite, Petko Kovachev, who is also a member and founder of Green Policy Institute, spoke on RFI Bulgaria. Besides the very ambitious programme the new party has planned, Kovachev said Zelenite would propose an environmental tax reform. It foresees the tax burden to be shifted away from the human initiative/human labour force onto the usage on natural resources. This would make the usage of natural resources as effective as possible. According to fiscallygreen.ca, “ecological tax reform (ETR), or environmental tax shifting, can involve adjusting existing taxes to make them sensitive to environmental impacts. An example of this kind of policy is exempting ethanol from fuel taxes based on the environmental merits of the use of ethanol as a motor fuel. ETR might also involve levying new ecological taxes to offer incentives to reduce environmental impacts and ‘recycling’ the revenue from the new taxes. The revenue can be recycled in numerous ways, including funding reductions in existing taxes, new credit or subsidy programs, or refunds to taxpayers. An example of this kind of ETR policy is the introduction of carbon taxes, combined with reductions in payroll taxes.”

In any case, the idea of an environmental tax shift sounds very specious for people like myself, who realise that most of the fossil fuels are at their peak and soon will be over, while other natural resources, such as wood and water, are used without any thought to the future by many human beings.

In addition, on May 23 it appeared Bulgarian Minister of Economy and Energy Petar Dimitrov has also realised some resources are going to soon come to an end. He said on private broadcaster bTV that after 40 years the ground reserves of natural gas will be exhausted, while after about 150 years the stocks of coal will be used up.

Kovachev said the global worming is predeterminating such changes of the climate in Bulgaria that will be followed by change in the agro cultures that can be grown up in the country, which is a fact that the local farmers and developers must have in mind in order to survive.

But Zelenite of course have their enemies ever since before they officially established on May 18. On May 19, Bulgarian-language daily Monitor reported some of the members of their initiative committee were journalists from Bulgarian-language newspapers Capital and Dnevnik, “as well as environmentalists, who co-operate with publications of the group of business media of Ivo Prokopiev”. According to Monitor, Prokopiev himself is behind the party, and he uses environmental actions to cover his construction business.

Such allegations, however, cannot be accepted as reality, as mainly environmental activists established the newly formed party. They accept among themselves journalists, who before all correctly report on what is going on on the nature front in Bulgaria, and how exactly the nature gifts are destroyed. Of course journalists are free to also take a position and be green as nature, but some of them, apparently not from Economedia team, blame others, most probably in deeds they did themselves. According to local environmentalists, not Zelenite but Zelena Bulgaria (Green Bulgaria, also а recently formed green party) is the one, which hides behind the environmental ideas to use its positions to gain key points for the massive tourism industry in Bulgaria. Zelena Bulgaria had suspiciously big finance to do environmental campaigns during times of elections and mysteriously cancelled the campaigns after elections were over. And during the last municipal elections, Zelena Bulgaria nominated candidates for mayors only in regions appealing to the massive tourism constructions and nature destroy, such as Black sea small towns and villages, settlements in Rila, Pirin and other precious Bulgarian mountains.

So now, naturally follows the question: with which exactly party does Monitor have connections?