WHAT MEASURES TO ADOPT FOR THE ENVIRONMENT?

By Franca Colozzo

To my questions that have remained pending in a previous article, I will try to give an answer based on the assessments that I have gradually formalized.

• How to prevent the planet’s temperature rise of 1.5 ° C, expected for 2040?
• What corrective measures to take?
• How to convince the major countries (USA and China) to reduce CO2 emissions?
•  How to progressively reduce the increase in CO2 (2.7% every year)?

Banning fossil fuels (especially coal) appears to be a necessary measure to curb the growing trend of temperature rise with all the consequent climatic variations induced by this phenomenon.

We must isolate the counter-current policy of American President Trump, who abandoned the Paris and Madrid climate conferences in order to deny the direct relationship between rising temperatures and climatic variations, with excessive events. His denial of the explosive effects of such policies led him to enhance the use of coal.

Extend the use of alternative energy sources to fossil fuels (coal, oil, etc.), such as photovoltaic panels for the production of electricity, solar, energy from the tides, geothermal energy, wind, energy from waste, etc.

Change human habits, replacing the usual habits with new ones. The phenomenon that I call “pincer” can start both from below, from people, and from above, but it will be necessary to reverse the propaganda route of the large manufacturing companies. The large industry, in fact, aims at an immediate and not long-term profit, for which it uses devastating advertising by directing people towards incorrect consumption, in an incorrect way and with improper materials (e.g. plastic).

 How can we avoid this and ensure that people become more and more environmentally aware?

Long-term thinking is based on the awareness of turning the page, but to do this it is necessary to convince consumers of the goodness of these measures. Adopting them does not only mean saving the environment, but the human race, otherwise doomed to extinction. Already much of the damage has been done with the extinction of about 80% of animal and plant species. If we continue on this wavelength we will face an apocalypse and I say this not to make the Cassandra, but to prevent one of the most unfortunate environmental conditions produced by men and not by the Precession of the Equinoxes.

It is known that glaciations and climate changes occur periodically (a long time interval of about 10,000 years, i.e. the time that the Earth’s axis describes, forming a virtual cone, around the perpendicular to the ecliptic that the Earth travels in its revolution around the Sun), but the trend of temperature rise has undergone increasing peaks as a result of progressive industrialization (from 1750 to 2011 there has been a continuous increase),  with a crescendo that reaches our days and a peak between 2002 and 2018: in the last fifty years then the surge is evident through the graphs that describe this worrying phenomenon. It is useless to resort to the Holocene or to previous periods of glaciation, it is evident that the ongoing phenomenon is exclusively linked to human activity. So if we continue along the same lines in 2040, we will overcome the critical point of no return with an irreversible greenhouse effect.

  CONCLUSION

From the premises it clearly emerges, in my opinion, the need to educate the population, especially the new generation, to ensure that a critical conscience is asserted, taking the upper hand over those who, in the name of profit, are sacrificing the rest of the world population, the majority since a small number of super-rich (about 62) have a wealth equal to that possessed by 3.5 billion world population. On an ethical level, it is paradoxical how modern slaves, in possession of the most sophisticated technologies, do not rebel against this blatant injustice now that the means of communication allow the majority of people to connect.

Just the need, in which it is artfully placed, makes humans even more slaves than it was in the past when there was only word of mouth. We will be able to balance a similar inequality under the eyes of all, men who are now embarrassed in the grip of the arrogance of a few, at the threshold of the third millennium.

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LEGEND

The Holocene is the most recent geological era, the one in which we find ourselves and which had its beginning conventionally about 11,700 years ago. The limit with the lower epoch (the Pleistocene) is defined on the basis of the decay of 14C (a radioactive carbon isotope) and coincides approximately with the end of the last glacial phase that affected the northern hemisphere. The Holocene is the second period of the Quaternary period. Its name comes from the Greek ὅλος (holos, absolutely) and καινός (kainos, recent). It has been identified with MIS 1 and can be considered an interglacial period included in the current Ice Age.

Anthropocene (Anthropocene) s. m. The current geological era, in which the Earth’s environment, in all its physical, chemical, and biological characteristics, is strongly influenced on both a local and global scale by the effects of human action, with particular reference to the increase in concentrations of CO2 and CH4 in the atmosphere. For many years geologists, experts in stratigraphy, scientists, and climatologists, have been discussing the date when the Holocene, which began 11 thousand years ago, ended. The term Anthropocene was coined as early as 2000 by the Nobel prize-winning Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen, while the symbolic date of 16 July 1945 is the result of research carried out by an international group of scholars belonging to the Anthropocene Working Group (Awg). (Eva Perasso, Corriere della sera.it, 21 January 2015, Scienze) – [title] Anthropocene, the 7 signs of a new geological era [summary] Seven uncomfortable legacies we are leaving on the planet. Seven worrying evidence of the beginning of a / new course of Earth’s history, conditioned – in negative – by man. (Focus. it, 12 January 2016, Environment).