To the Editor:

Thank you for the coverage of the terrible fires in Greece. I am a first generation Greek-American, and I have been spending summers in Greece my entire life. When I was a child, I used to visit my pappou’s fields and in the summer, there was nothing, no dry brush ready to spark and cause a fire because he had goats which kept the fields clear. They ate up all the vegetation that would have dried up in the hot summer sun and added fuel to a fire.

Ever since Greece joined the European Union, agriculture has declined in Greece, in my opinion. It has become cheaper to import meat from other EU countries, so nobody has goats anymore to take care of the fields and the brush. I was back in my pappou’s village just two years ago and many of the fields were overgrown with weeds out of control and six feet high. This environmental disaster is the EU’s fault. Greece needs to get out of the euro and go back to its traditional way of life.

John Perdikopoulos

Portland, OR