A group of Spanish homeowners and real estate
developers have filed suit against Greenpeace for its global warming campaign,
which they say has caused a steep decrease in the price of their beachfront
properties.
The suit -- which the developers plan to
present unless Greenpeace agrees to a settlement of nearly $50M -- is over
resort properties in La Manga del Mar Menor, in Southwest Spain. Greenpeace, in
their recent book Photoclima, prominently featured digitally altered
photographs of the resort, with only the tops of apartment buildings, hotels,
and palm trees barely visible above a flooded sea. The book also showed
before-and-after photos of Spain's lush lemon and orange growing region of
Valencia, transformed into an arid desert. "We want[ed] to create alarm
and a call to action", said Juan Lopez de Uralde, Greenpeace's director in
Spain.
The photos created a sense of alarm in La
Manga, with property values dropping by 50 percent after the book appeared.
Jose Angel Abad, an attorney representing the property owners, says
"Greenpeace manipulated the expected rise [to] cause alarm. It has sunk
the real estate market: no one is buying and everyone has put their apartments
up for sale". The UN IPCC predicts a 30 cm increase in sea level over the
next century, a rise far smaller than the vast degree of flooding depicted in
the book.
The group is seeking a EUR 27 million
settlement, to cover the decline in their property values.
Greenpeace says the action is intended to
"blackmail" them into footing the bill for the price drop, which they
blame on an oversaturated real-estate market. However, home prices in Spain
rose an average of 4% in 2007, though some regions saw declines of up to 8%.