There is a middle ground between catastrophism and climate indifference, explains Ermete Realacci, president of the Symbola Foundation. The latest UN climate report must push us to implement the necessary economic policies as soon as possible, exploiting and promoting the sectors in which Italy is already a leader
“A few decades ago, Lake Chad in Africa covered 25,000 square km, more than Lombardy. Today there are less than 2,000, it is smaller than the Val D’Aosta. The water resource borders on four countries, including Nigeria, which has over 200 million inhabitants, ”he says Ermete Realacci, president of the Symbola foundation. “Clearly this situation leads to hunger and conflict; it is no coincidence that the extremist group Boko Haram operates nearby. The area is the origin of migratory flows but also changes in climate that generate famine and suffering, push entire populations to seek life expectancy elsewhere ”.
Formiche.net reached the expert, a dean among Italian environmentalists, a few hours after the publication of the latest IPCC report, according to which we have just a decade left to limit the most serious effects of the inevitable increase in the earth’s temperature. The report confirms an obvious trend, he says, but talking about targets and tons of CO2 in public discourse is abstract, limiting. The history of Lake Chad serves precisely to understand that the climate crisis is not just an environmental issue, but an immense process that affects the economy, society, security, relations between states and the future of relations between peoples.
“Our energies must be directed not so much to describe the dangers and climatic processes underway, but to understand how these can be a key to a new economy, a new society”. Rather than shouting disaster, therefore, the IPCC report must push us to implement economic and social (but also cultural and identity) policies. Without running into two opposite errors, namely the “Gattopardo line” of those who raise their hands and resign themselves to inaction, and the extremist declination of environmentalism, the one that also hinders the construction of plants for the production of renewable energy .
The Realacci line is innervated with pragmatism and its polar star is the setting in motion of the ecological transition process. The expert approves the European package Fit for 55 (which contains measures to halve European emissions by 2030) and it also agrees with the most discussed measures, such as the decision to ban the sale of internal combustion engines from 2035 (“it has long been clear that do”). Even a great manager like Sergio Marchionne disavowed his historical distrust of electric cars and embraced them as “the future”, recalls the environmentalist, citing a 2018 interview with Corriere della Sera released shortly before the industrialist left FCA.
Today the automobile industry itself has proved more dynamic than commentators, certain large European groups have already declared their intention to electrify (or hybridize) the entire fleet by 2030. For the industrialist, the worker and the country-system (interpreted by the politician), grounding translates into equipping oneself to face the game in a winning way and not lose pieces of economic supply chains. Just look at the German state of Baden-Württemberg, observes Realacci: in the most industrial region of Europe, where companies of the caliber of Bosch and Daimler are headquartered, the greens have ruled for a decade (and it would not be possible if even the workers did not vote in that direction).
For the expert, in Europe Germany is the technological-economic center of gravity of this challenge, but “we are not Calimero… Italy is much stronger than it is seen by Italians too”. Now is the time to take advantage of the great flexibility of the Italian production system (and its entrepreneurs) to restart from the sectors in which it is already a leader. “Italy has the opportunity to play a leading role, we are the most advanced in the circular economy and material recovery and all our sectors are more efficient”. Merit of the “Italian production chromosome” that allows you to combine quality, beauty, innovation, design and efficiency, virtues well summarized in the Salone del Mobile in Milan: “we are third for manufacturing surplus in the world but we win Italian style”, observes the expert .
Attention: this advantage must be promoted with adequate industrial policies so as not to repeat the same mistake that the Italy-system (Fiat) made with Olivetti, making Italy lose a possible historical primacy in the development of information technology. For Realacci, today we are probably world leaders in green chemistry, a field that will be crucial in the future: “what do we want to wait”, the expert asks, “that Germans, Americans and Chinese recover our intellectual achievements only by virtue of their massive investments ? ” Continue with the research, therefore, with a focus on green hydrogen and renewable sources.
At the geopolitical level, then, the strength of Europe was found in the idea of carbon border tax, a measure “of great importance, which on the one hand protects and helps a process of reshoring already underway, and on the other hand it pushes all countries to take more ambitious paths ”. After all, Realacci recalls, we are the largest market in the world. Therefore, making this choice in concert with the United States can bring forward “the Atlantic revival centered on the fight against the climate crisis”, concludes the expert, a joint effort to “create a human-sized economy that leaves no one behind” . These measures “will mature in the next few years, and will be decisive”.