I was never an environmentalist. I don’t even consider myself a naturalist. I have lived almost all my life in the city, enjoying the pleasures of consumerism with great carefreeness, I am the son of the Italian economic miracle of the ’60s. I rarely went camping, not willingly anyway, and while I always thought that it was fundamentally respecting the environment and practicing solidarity, I also accepted the idea that there was a compromise between economic growth and costs to nature – and I thought, well, in most cases that I would opt for growth.

Although the term “environmental communicator” might be appropriate or convenient, in the sense that I actually try to do something for the protection of the environment in my own small way to inform about sustainable efficiency and stop indiscriminate soil consumption, it seems to me that the inconsistency and contradiction of my lifestyle is such as to frustrate my being aware and active.

I am not going to slaughter a cow myself to eat meat, but I am not going to become a vegan either. In this way – I, like any other Italian who has spent his life fatally complacent, and intentionally deluded, about climate change, which is not only the biggest threat that human life on the planet has ever faced, but a threat of a completely different category and scale. This is the scale of human life itself.

On behalf of no one I formally accuse myself of cowardice, because if I get caught up in indignation and rejection without imagining a world different from the one that appears today, I break the sacred pact that wants every generation to leave their children a better world than what I, in turn, inherited. Creativity is a duty and is free, because everyone is creative if you give permission to be so… at least here we dare, come on!

The environment is a collective good, a heritage of all humanity. And it is the responsibility of each of us; a responsibility that can only be transversal and there is a need for information, for altruism, for waking up, but above all for respect and awareness of the need for change on the part of all.

So it is not enough to say that I defend the environment: the environment is defended with works before words. The problem is, after all, us, the people, and not just the institutions. Let us act in such a way that the effects of our action are compatible with the continuation of an authentically human life.

Global warming may seem like a legend lost in the mists of time, inflicting a sort of biblical punishment from the Old Testament on the great-grandchildren of those responsible, since it was the burning of coal in 18th century England that ignited the fuse for everything that followed. But this is a fairy tale about the historical wickedness that absolves those of us alive today – and unjustly. Most of the combustion has come in the last 25 years.

We cannot forget that the world GDP of oil, knows no crisis, and stands at $ 3,000 billion every year, which exceeds the GDP of more than 131 states out of 196 of the Planet and all without counting the billions of barrels of oil stored as gold reserves, uninterruptedly integrated, in every country in the world.

And that to produce the food we eat we use fertilizers and pesticides derived from oil; almost all the building materials we use – cement, plastics, etc. – are derived from fossil fuels, as well as the vast majority of the drugs we use; the clothes we wear are, for the most part, made of synthetic petrochemical fibers; transport, heating, electricity and lighting depend almost entirely on fossil fuels.

But the Third Industrial Revolution offers us the hope of reaching a new sustainable post-carbon era, avoiding the catastrophe of climate change. We have the scientific and technological knowledge and guidelines to make it possible. Now the question is to be willing to recognise the economic opportunities ahead and find the determination to seize them in time.

“The Stone Age is not over because of a lack of stones and the Oil Age will not end with the drying up of wells” and the geopolitics of oil changes the world order.
(Ahmed Zaki, Saudi oil minister from 1962 to 1986)

Enlarge click Boys from all over the world strike for the climate

Why are there those who do not believe in climate change? Even if the evidence is overwhelming, many deny the risks that our planet is running. Yet there is a great deal of study, overwhelming evidence, scientists agreeing and the consequences are already visible. Yet many people around the world believe that climate change is an invention, or at least that it is not imminent and, all in all, less dangerous than the data indicate.

The answer lies within Us. To activate our alarm system, it is not enough for a stimulus to be perceived as generally negative. Climate change does not trigger such reactions because it appears to us to be distant, both in time and space. The effects of our actions on the environment are not immediate, and perhaps we will not suffer them either.

Even if only a few years are left until 2050 – the date by which, according to many scientists, we should drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, otherwise the exponential growth of extreme climatic events and, in general, of natural disasters caused by global warming – that date is still perceived as distant, just as geographically distant appear the North Pole, whose ice is melting, and South-East Asia, upset by floods or the desertification of sub-Saharan Africa and the Sahel.

This “perceived distance” leads us not to believe in predictions as harmful as those on the effects of climate change, an attitude amplified by the defensive mechanism of removal, which we unconsciously use in many contexts to drive away concerns.

But there’s more. In the case of climate change, we struggle to understand the exact causal link between past decisions and the current growing scenario of climate chaos. Therefore, the risk of catastrophic events due to overheating appears to us to be very small.

The fact that climate change no longer affects the individual, but the group, also influences the judgement. There is no risk of lightning hitting me here, but of flooding overwhelming us all. And that makes a difference to our brains. Being together changes the perception of risk, reducing it. Prudent on our own, in a group we feel safer and more audacious.

All this contributes to underestimating the threat of global warming. It should also be added that the reasoning on this subject is often abstract and not immediately comprehensible. Therefore, the listener may be persuaded to consider it as unfounded, if not manipulated, information.

The fact that we perceive climate change as a collective problem also leads us to believe that solutions are the exclusive competence of international institutions, governments or treaties. But in practice this is not the case: the behaviour of the individual, although not decisive, is relevant.

In some cases, however, the lack of action may not result from sincere disinterestedness or real apathy. What could also paralyze us is the fear and feeling of helplessness in the face of a global threat.

When measuring the level of knowledge of each one of us, there emerges a profound ignorance of the relationships between the use of fossil fuels and the accumulation of CO2 and between greenhouse gases and climate change.

Lacking this basic information, citizens cannot understand that their way of life also plays a role in determining climate change and that changing it could help to contain the phenomenon. Finally, we must not forget that in group dynamics the context and social approval play a fundamental role.

The motivation to act depends on our system of values, but also on the attitude of those around us. And so the sustainable choices of some can become contagious and influence the behaviour of all, especially if this is associated with legislative decisions that accompany and encourage them.

The sense of helplessness, in short, can diminish when you feel part of a group or a community of people acting in a virtuous way. It would be enough to start.

There is a need for information, for altruism, for waking up, but above all for respect and awareness of the need for change on the part of all. Now we must commit ourselves to the common good and rediscover the ecological values that young people all over the world believe in and, following the example of Greta Thunberg, they address a strong and clear message to world leaders: “You are putting our future on the line with your inactivity, you must panic about the climate”. What unites them is the awareness that we are stealing their future “our house is on fire but we can still change things”.

The future of the Planet is in our hands, but it belongs to the next generations.