Enlarging the country’s green lung with Pnrr money is more difficult than you think

The premise is important: plants are the only living organisms that connect earth and sky. The plants absorb water and nutrients with their roots, the solution slowly migrates towards the foliage, here, the leaves open their stomata and let this infamous gas, carbon dioxide, enter and thanks to the chloroplasts and the light, the photosynthetic reaction develops which as a result it produces starch (which is needed by the plant, but also by us) and water and oxygen. So we are children of plants, not of the stars as the talented Alan Sorrenti sang way back in 1977. An important premise, because plants, in addition to calming souls and consoling the afflicted (it happens in some gardens), store carbon dioxide. So, it is a natural converter of C02 that can be useful to us, given that there is an excess of it, given then climate change and given that climate engineering promises well but is still lacking in practice. Conclusion? Plants must be planted, indeed within the Pnrr, 330 million euros have been allocated to plant about 6.6 million trees between now and 2024. Well, right? But no, after all the oddities of our country are known to all. We have a very strong tendency to announce slogans, superlative projects and delicious intentions, which then stop at the first obstacle and everything collapses, even if, despite the collapse, everything is resolved with tarallucci and wine: and we are ready for new and bombastic announcements. So it is with plants, do we have to plant them? Yes, of course, however we realize that we don’t have them. Why don’t we have plants? Because we no longer have, or are not enough, forest nurseries. Of course, there are nurseries, but they produce plants of agricultural interest for farmers and for me who have to put the wisteria outside on the balcony or the orchid in the bathroom, ornamental and perfumed stuff, please, but the Pnrr was born with other objectives.