An increasingly fickle and extreme climate and the green program that the European Commission intends to start in December have caused winds in Italy that for the first time are blowing in favor of a real ecological transition of its economy. Rome wants to place itself in the group of countries eager to reverse the trend before it is too late. To this end, despite its difficult economic situation (the country's GDP grew 0.1% this year, according to the latest forecast), the new Italian Government is finalizing the implementation of a major green reform in its latest budget law, whose debate in Parliament is already in an advanced stage. The legislation in question contemplates a fund of more than 4,000 million euros until 2023 to promote a series of initiatives that promote " decarbonization, the circular economy, urban regeneration, sustainable tourism and the prevention and mitigation of the risks derived from the climate crisis ", among other measures. In the same way, it also analyzes the possibility of issuing green State titles, a proposal that will be studied by a commission created ad hoc coordinated by the Italian Ministry of Economy.
In a few months, since in September the new Italian Executive dedicated a whole section to the implementation of the so-called New Green Deal, in its Government program, Rome thus insists on its objective of reducing the use of fossil fuels, as requested by the European Commission.
"Urgent" measures
Another example is Decree Law number 241, approved in October and made up of a battery of "urgent" measures to deal with "the climate crisis and environmental pollution," which includes incentives for the transition to electric cars. Ermete Realacci, an old-fashioned Italian ecologist, believes that the initiative is the sign that "the country's political class has finally awakened." "Italy is a country poor in raw materials in which many companies have been oriented for a long time towards green economy strategies for reasons of profitability, despite not having the support of the State," says the environmentalist. According to the organization he chairs, Symbola, in the last 5 years, a total of 345,000 companies have invested in 'green' projects and 3.1 million workers (13.4% of the total) employed in this sector have been reached. "These are figures that are expected to increase in the coming years, since the companies that invested in green projects are exporting more than the others," says Realacci.
"On red alert"
As climatologists like Massimiliano Fazziniemphasize, time is running out. "The country is already on red alert," argues Fazzini, emphasizing that the climate crisis is particularly hard in Italy due to the fragile geological situation of the country, which is also suffering from seismic shocks. "Just think of all the glaciers in the Italian Alps that are melting and what the consequences are for the tourism sector," he adds. For this reason, Fazzini, like other ecologists and economists, considers that the new ecological awareness that seems to have permeated the Government is only the beginning of a transition that will be complex, long and, probably, not without contradictions. "We would need not 20, but 20,000 million euros a year to reverse this situation!", Agrees Marcello Minenna, an economist at Bocconi University . "The rest are crumbs", sentence.