Luca De Lellis July 18, 2023
The scorching heat of the last Italian week has also fueled public debate. And even in this context, controversy has erupted between those who don’t care about climate change and those who instead see temperatures well above 40 degrees as big alarm bells. So much so that even the Times, a British newspaper, called Rome “the city of hell.” Federico Rampini tried to bring the climate Taliban back to reality in the episode of Controcorrente broadcast on Rete 4 on Tuesday, July 18: “Across the northern hemisphere, very high temperature peaks occur in summer, albeit there are areas like… “England is an exception,” began the New York editor of the Corriere della Sera. He then continued: “Here in America we also talk about the heat of Rome, but among many other things.”
Moderator Veronica Gentili then revealed a background “on China-United States relations,” which in the “fight against climate change” is trying to find common ground over everything despite bad relations and constant bickering. All of this, however, springs from a non-negligible assumption, namely “the awareness that this struggle must begin there in China, not in Rome”. The reason is obvious: “China now emits more CO2 than the USA and the European Union combined.”
According to Rampini, Italy’s and the whole of Europe’s contribution to the fight against climate change can only be marginal. “The decisions that Beijing is making on this issue instead have a significant impact.” And how is the debate being handled in China? “Unlike us and the United States, which are very similar,” because there “the approach is pragmatic.” “For some time,” explains the journalist, “government agencies have been convinced that climate change is mainly caused by human activity.” And then, “China invests heavily in renewable energy, which includes nuclear energy as a primary resource, but it’s also a big user of solar-derived energy.” However, Rampini concludes that China “knows very well that renewable Energies alone are not enough today, and that is why they continue to build coal-fired power plants, believing that we must continue to produce to adapt to the heat and simply put in air conditioning.” Hospitals”.