“Against floods more works and less ideology”. The mayor of Ravenna speaks

“Politics must ask itself which is its priority: saving human lives or the trees and coypu in the rivers?”. Michele De Pascale, mayor of the city under emergency, speaks: “Climate change? We need more works and less ideology”

“This tragedy teaches us that politics must prioritize itself: is it more important to save lives or worry about issues such as nesting in rivers or the defense of trees and nutria?”. Michele DePascale he is the mayor of Ravenna. For several hours he has been living what he called “the worst days in our province”. Yet it is far from fatalistic, looking at the damage that the flood has inflicted on his community, in the second largest municipality in Italy by territorial extension. “In these hours I hear on television broadcasts that the solution would be to re-naturalise the rivers, to return to a glorious and uncontaminated past. But for us, going back to the past would mean going back to the swamps, to malaria”, he tells Il Foglio. “They say it was an inevitable event. But we avoided what would have been a real catastrophe. And not thanks to yesterday’s work, but rather to the diversion of the Ronco and Montone rivers, to the great engineering project of the United Rivers, which dates back to the 1600s. Here’s what I reply to those who ask us to go back: it would be enough to live up to one’s past”. It is De Pascale himself who acknowledges that “in the space of two weeks we had record rainfall, the likes of which had never been recorded before”. So, go back deniers. “Climate change is a fact. Except that while before the communists like my grandfather embraced innovation to clean up, breaking their backs, now the environmentalists would like to block everything”.