Yes, we can. Defeat climate change this decade it is difficult but not impossible. This is the encouraging message emerging from the latest IEA data on global carbon emissions. After two consecutive years of growth, in 2019 they remained stationary at 33 billion tonnes despite the world economy growing by 2,9%.
It is the combined effect of several factors, but beyond the more unbalanced energy mix on cleaner sources: not only renewables but also the recovery of nuclear power and the transition from coal to gas (the least polluting of fossil fuels), the underlying trends that emerge confirm that thanks to technological progress, the decoupling between growth and the ecological footprint has been achieved climate-saving apocalyptic narration persists in denying. First, the growth rate of energy demand is controlled as a result of the efficiency of energy-intensive production processes.
Second, increasingly, in advanced countries the energy generated is less carbon intensive. Last year, each kWh emitted 6,5% less CO2 than in 2018. This corresponds to an improvement three times higher than the average of the last 10 years, and largely offsets the overall increase in global electricity demand.
The data from the IEA come about to confirm a vision of progressive and pragmatic environmentalism in which technology holds together the environment, industry and social justice. Let us not forget that living in an industrial world, the green transition of a productive economy, if achieved by pursuing the radicalism of a dysfunctional degrowth, more than decarbonization it turns into a recession.
Alarmism is not a strategy to promote realistic and effective environmental policies not dictated by the anxiety-provoking emotion of the climate emergency, which we recognize, even if it is only one of the tiles of a complex and interconnected system of various ecological challenges. The fate of the planet has not improved as a result of the crescendo of catastrophism. Half of excess CO2 emissions from man-made sources were released into the atmosphere after the late 90s when scientists had already sounded the alarm and governments had pledged to act.
A point of view certainly against the tide but not too niche. Precisely to intercept it in civil society, last Saturday morning, in the Utopia headquarters in Rome, they met, collection calls from Chicco Testa, about forty entrepreneurs, lawyers, journalists, farmers, academics, with skills and experience in various fields, to reflect on how to network to promote an alternative to the myths of Disney's green narrative in circulation.
A challenge to the culture of emotional proclamations and misleading schematisms. The initiative is still in its embryonic stage, so much so that the name is still being discussed, but there is agreement on the organizational structure, agile and flexible, without – for now – even the constraints of an association. From the starting nucleus unfolds a constellation of individuals and already established groups who do not all think uniformly on the various environmental issues but share a common vision based on four conceptual pillars:
- Development versus degrowth
- Hope against catastrophism
- Evidence against slogans and schematisms
- Technology and science against traditionalist obscurantism
In March, a manifesto of environmental reformism will be released which sets them out and the program of activities in the pipeline to disseminate, proselytise, train, and also to influence the public decision-making process. Among the proposals put forward by the participants, the analytical reading of the text of the Community Green New Deal e a position paper on the mechanism of environmental authorizations. Specific initiatives are also planned in various Italian cities; in Rome a meeting on the theme of the environment and justice, in Florence on the pairing of the environment and infrastructure, in Milan on the relationship between the environment and investments, in Palermo on the environmental situation in the south.
For information you can send an email to: piuverde2020@gmail.com
