About climate change and what’s next

The different areas of the world have always had changing weather conditions, leading to migrations and pushing human communities to adapt.

We are still experiencing significant changes with global warming. Average temperatures have risen. CO2 emissions have increased.

Everybody acknowledges such undisputed data.
Hence, what is the debate about? It is about the causes of global warming and the fact that only man-produced CO2 is provoking it. It is about forecast and the possibility for global warming to be irreversible.

These are all assumptions and not certainties. IPCC (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) scientists are merely fashioning mathematical models outlining forecasts on temperatures on certain future dates. They are forecasting events. Additionally, IPCC models do vary and contain (depending on initial assumptions) different outcomes for “future” temperature increase (ranging from +1.5 to +6 degrees). Such range obviously proves that IPCC experts assume that climate may evolve in different ways.

Even those, in the scientific community and in the civil society, who are extremely perplexed on climate change measurement and assessment of its actual scope in space and time, do agree on the need to act to ensure safety and foster energy efficiency.
However, there is no need to foster fear to achieve this.

Policies needed to solve these issues are well known. They do not need to be invented. It undoubtedly takes investments to adopt technologies allowing water saving in irrigation. We do have far more sophisticated solutions today than we did in the past.

We simply have to be willing to collect, distribute and use water efficiently and sustainably. It would be absurd if climate change forced us to stop growing food: indeed, it does require much water, but it is also the most valuable part of agriculture and, consequently, of our economy.

When new needs emerge, old ideas and projects should be dusted off and rekindled.

Alfonso Pascale