(by Vito Coviello, AIDR Member and Head of the Digital Technologies Observatory in the Transport and Logistics sector) Back in the 30s, the 32nd President of the United States of America, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, uttered this phrase in his speech: “A nation that destroys its own soil is destroyed. Forests are the lungs of our land, they purify the air and give new strength to our people ”.
Today, after more than 90 years, we could say that he was unfortunately right, but the human being has continued not to listen to the cries of alarm and the signs of the devastating consequences of climate change caused by the uncontrolled exploitation of the planet's resources.
The main cause of climate change is the greenhouse effect caused by some gases that act just like a "greenhouse": they capture the sun's heat and retain it, causing the temperature to rise in every corner of our planet.
Global temperature rise is occurring much faster than experts' estimates and the dramatic effects are visible to all:
sea level rise due to melting glaciers, the increase of CO2 and greenhouse gases generated by the combustion of coal, oil and gas caused largely by power plants, other industrial plants and means of transport,
The increase in extreme weather phenomena, desertification caused by climate change and by man, because the soil is itself a reservoir of CO2 that is released with the depletion of vegetation.
Does the man seem to have noticed the problem just now? Obviously not.
In the last thirty years alone we will find thousands of publications, books, articles on the subject: the experts have presented an infinite number of scientific data and projections useful for understanding the seriousness of the problem.
Those on the devastating effects of the unstoppable and accelerated increase in global warming were not prophecies, but objective data that the world community has taken seriously only in recent years.
The United Nations organization and the European Union have made specific commitments since 2015 to combat climate change and, specifically, the'European Union plans to reduce CO55 emissions by 2030% and by 2 compared to 1990 and to reach climate neutrality by 2050.
The United Nations Organization has prepared the UN 2030 agenda which plans to achieve three climate objectives by 2030:
- reduce CO45 emissions by 2% by 2030;
- achieve climate neutrality by 2050;
- stabilize the global temperature rise to 1,5 ° by the end of the century.
In addition to the fight for climate change, the UN 2030 agenda also includes 17 other goals:
Goal 1 - end poverty,
Goal 2 - defeat hunger,
Goal 3 - health and wellness,
Goal 4 - quality education,
Goal 5 - Gender equality,
Goal 6 - Clean water and sanitation,
Goal 7 - Clean and accessible energy,
Goal 8 - Jobs and economic growth,
Goal 9 - Businesses, Innovation and Infrastructures,
Goal 10 - Reduction of inequalities,
Goal 11 - Sustainable cities and communities,
Goal 12 - responsible consumption and production,
Goal 13 - Fight against climate change,
Goal 14 - Life Underwater,
Goal 15 - Life on earth
Goal 16 - Peace, Justice and strong institutions,
Goal 17 - Partnership for Goals.
Regarding Goal 13, promoting action at all levels to combat climate change, United Nations Secretary-General Guterres, at the opening of the debate of the seventy-sixth General Assembly on 21 September, said that
“… We are on the edge of an abyss and moving in the wrong direction. I am here to sound the alarm… the world has never been more threatened and more divided… the recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Cange was a red code for humanity. We are a few weeks away from Cop26 in Glasgow, but apparently light years away from achieving our goals. We must be serious, we must act quickly,… ".
COP26 is the United Nations conference on climate change of 2021. The UN has been bringing together almost all the countries of the earth on climate for about 30 years, but the priority has only really been raised in recent years following the rapid and unexpected further worsening of forecasts.
This year the COP will be held in Glasgow and will have an extraordinary character because all countries will have to undertake far more onerous commitments to try to respect the commitments made in the Paris COP to contain the increase in global warming to 1,5 degrees.
All countries, including Italy, agreed to sign the agreement with which they committed themselves to achieving this goal by 2030.
But what is the real situation today?
In the meeting between 50 Ministers for the Environment (pre-COP26 meeting, Minister Cingolani present for Italy) the need to do more emerged if we want to keep the heating below 1,5 degrees.
All states must do more for decarbonisation and, with regard to developing countries, every action must be guaranteed to disburse the climate fund of 2025 billion dollars by 100 and discourage any investment in research and extraction of fossils and concentrate all investment efforts towards the use of energy resources with zero impact on the environment.
What is happening on the planet?
What are the disturbing signs that have finally pushed countries to seek solutions to stop global warming and prevent it from continuing towards an irreversible deterioration?
Melting glaciers.
The ongoing melting or melting of glaciers is a known problem.
Over the past two decades, there have been many warnings about the seriousness of the problem: from the scientific community, from environmental associations, from experts in the sector and from ordinary people.
In the last 20 years there has been a sharp acceleration in the melting of glaciers, it is estimated that we have lost over 267 billion tons of ice per year, with a surge of 130% between 2000 and 2019.
A study conducted by an international team of researchers from the University of Toulouse carried out on the 217.000 glaciers in the world, made it possible to make these estimates on the basis of very high precision measurements of the thickness of these glaciers. The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets were excluded from the study.
The conclusions of this study are very alarming if they are confirmed. Even if we were to manage to limit the rise in global temperature, according to the conclusions of the scholars, we could never restore the state of the glaciers to that before melting.
The melting of alpine glaciers in Italy.
The Italian situation is no exception, of course: at least seven glaciers in Italy are at risk of melting due to climate change.
In the last 150 years, the surface of Alpine glaciers has reduced by 60% compared to the occupied surface, with peaks of 82% in the Julian Alps and 97% in the Maritime Alps.
It seems that the dust that settles as a result of the rains causes glaciers to melt even more rapidly.
The rise in the level of the oceans and seas.
The progressive melting of glaciers causes the level of the oceans to rise with the consequent risk for the inhabitants of coastal cities who will be forced to abandon entire regions adjacent to the coast.
The Solomon Islands. The inhabitants of Nuatambu Island, an archipelago of the Solomon Islands, have lost more than half of their habitable area since 2011 due to rising sea levels.
The 25 families who inhabit the island have already lost 11 homes. Another 5 coral islands of the archipelago have disappeared, submerged by the waters of the sea. In these islands the sea level has risen by about 7-10 millimeters per year. 6 other islands are seriously affected by coastal erosion.
It is estimated that the Solomon Islands will gradually disappear from the geographical maps and what is most indignant is that the inhabitants who have no faults regarding the rise in temperature are the ones who pay the price; yet, they are its first victims.
The fires in California: deforestation and drought.
The situation with the fires in California is dramatic. In 2021, more than 180.000 hectares were burned in the Plumas, Butte, Losse and Teoma counties. In Sierra Nevada, between the state of California and Nevada, over 70.000 hectares were burned.
Fires and droughts that grow year after year at such a speed that today 73% of the territory is in conditions of "extreme" drought.
About 100 sq km burned in less than two weeks in Sequoia national park, a natural park in the Sierra Nevada, known for its unique specimens of trees that are up to 3 thousand years old.
Deforestation and fires in the Amazon.
It is estimated that areas of the Amazon forest as large as the surface of Italy (about 10 sq km) have been burned in the Amazon in the last 300.000 years.
In the same period, about 170.00 sq km of primary forest, the richest in biodiversity, were cut or burned.
Even in the Amazon, the situation becomes increasingly serious from year to year and the acceleration of these phenomena could quickly lead us to a point of no return if initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are not rapidly launched.
The Amazon is (soon we risk having to say ... it was) the largest green lung in the world and a world heritage for the balance of the earth ecosystem.
Deforestation and fires in Italy.
Extreme weather events aggravated by the ongoing climate change are also increasingly frequent in Italy: floods and floods are repeated with extraordinary force and frequency, causing enormous damage and inconvenience to the population. But there are also long periods of torrid and drought with a consequent risk of fires and desertification.
Italy holds the primacy in Europe for the number of fires: even if in most cases they are triggered by the hand of man, the ease with which they spread depends on the drought and consequent aridity of the areas. It is estimated that in the first half of the year alone, about 102.000 hectares of forest were burned in Italy.
Decarbonization and drought in Australia.
Australia is the largest producer and exporter of coal in the world and, as we know, the use of fossil fuels generates sulfuric, carbonic and nitric acids, which fall to Earth as acid rain, negatively affecting the environment.
In Queensland, the Australian outback, and in many other areas there is a severe drought: Australia was once full of green meadows and farms. Now in Queensland, farms are reduced to a tenth because there is no grass, farmers feed the animals with the maize they buy.
Water supplies are dwindling rapidly, there is a drought that has been going on for five years: a tragedy that had never happened before.
There are no more spring rains of years ago. Fires have increased: since 2019 Australia has burned a larger area than Scotland.
Heron island - Australia's great barrier reef
Here lives the green turtle which helps to maintain the balance of the marine system.
These turtles lay their eggs here, the sex of the unborn determines the temperature.
Due to the rise in temperature, 98% of the born are now females and green turtles risk rapid extinction which would also compromise the ecosystem in which they live.
Queensland researchers recover the eggs when the turtle lays them (1 turtle lays 120-150), create artificial nests to keep the eggs cool and make some male green turtles hatch.
The man is trying to intervene on a process of changing weather that is happening too rapidly and does not give the green turtles the possibility to understand how to change in order not to become extinct: in this case the man is trying to help them, but many others species are dying out due to the inability to adapt to sudden climate changes.
Remedies
It is quite clear that climate change is above all an energy problem: it is estimated that the generation, transport and consumption of energy is responsible for around 80% of the world's CO2 emissions.
It is not just a problem of switching to the use of renewable energy, even though the latter is a priority to reach the zero emission goal (switching to photovoltaic, wind, hydroelectric).
There are also many wastes of energy: it is calculated that only 1/3 of the total energy produced is then actually converted and used for civil and industrial uses, a large part of it is wasted in the process in the production and transmission phase.
The digitization of energy production and transmission processes can make it possible to reduce waste, especially in the transition phase from the use of fossil-based energy to the use of renewable energy.
The decarbonization process is much more complex because it needs to be addressed and solved worldwide, giving the poorest economies and the largest producers / extractors of fossil energy the opportunity to reconvert their economies.
Developing countries in particular have a greater need to be financially supported in this phase of reconversion.
The human being who is the cause of climate change must intervene in time and drastically by removing not only the causes of global warming, but also by restoring the heavily compromised ecosystem through the reforestation of the burnt areas or used for new grasslands and new farms, the recovery of desertified areas, the elimination of waste - primarily food waste, the protection of the sea and with a more balanced use of land for food and industrial purposes.