Let’s try to change climate change

Today is the Fiftieth World Environment Day. The first was on June 5, 1973. A historic photo had been circulating for a few months, which would become the most reproduced ever. The astronauts of the last Apollo mission had taken it on December 7, 1972 as they headed for the Moon. It was a picture of Earth from twenty-nine thousand kilometers away. It wasn’t the first color photo of the planet, and it wasn’t the first taken by humans instead of satellites. But it was the first to show the whole Earth, including the cap of the South Pole. Our beautiful, fragile home. They named it after a rare and precious stone: Blue Marble.

It is said that it was thanks to this image that many realized the size and centrality of the African continent, which until then was resized in Eurocentric maps. And it is also said that it was thanks to that image that many became aware of how everything on Earth is interconnected, of the importance of the environment and the need to protect it. Blue Marble, it has been written, “was a manifesto for global justice”. If that was indeed the case, it wasn’t enough. All that has been done so far has not been enough.

A few days ago an authoritative group of scientists, led by Johan Rockstrom, published a study which says that we have reached “the limit of the Earth’s biophysical capacity” and that as a result “we will have less food security, a worsening of the quality of water, the surfacing of groundwater, the worsening of livelihoods, especially among the vast vulnerable majorities in the world”. It is always the most vulnerable, the poorest, who pay the highest price for what you recently called “our senseless war on creation”. But we have not lost hope.

This morning a delegation of speakers from the Green and Blue Festival was received by Pope Francis. At the head were four young women who had come from distant countries and who were born many years after that historic photo. Sophia Kianni, Ineza Umuhoza Grace, Maya Gabeira and Licyprya Kanguyam are witnesses of the fact that we are doing too little and every day they fight to awaken our consciences. They and young people like them are our hope. They have come to try to “change climate change”. Overcome indifference. The opportunity comes from “Earth For All”. It is the proposal of a team of experts from the Club of Rome who focus on solutions and not on problems. The strength of the message is in considering the fight against climate change not only as an issue linked to a new energy mix, which is also indispensable; but as something that passes from the end of poverty, the reduction of inequalities, a new role in society for women and a transformation of the system by which we produce and consume food.

On these bases from Rome today we try to trigger a global conversation. We want to talk to the skeptics and the indifferent. Welcoming the invitation of Laudato Sì to “renew the dialogue on how we are building the future of the planet… a discussion that unites us all, because the environmental challenge we are experiencing, and its human roots, concern and touch us all”. But, and we always quote the Encyclical, it is necessary to do it on a basis “sincere and honest”.

The stole that as a GEDI publishing group we brought to the pontiff encompasses all these needs: it represents the climate strips that show, without words or numbers, the unequivocal warming of our planet over the last 170 years; it is made with recycled materials, because we believe that the time has come to definitively overcome the culture of waste and disposable consumption; and was created by a cooperative of refugees, women and men who fled wars and famines in search of a better future. Because, as Ineza Umuhoza Grace reminds us, “one cannot adapt to starve”.

Carlo Petrini, who has seen a lot, claims that “nothing can be changed with the lump”. Revolutions are not made with fear and sadness. But not only have we not lost hope, but our hearts are filled with joy. Because when in life you feel like you can make a difference by helping others, you can’t wait a minute to start doing it. This isn’t about trying to change the world because otherwise the world will end, but about doing it because this way the world will be better.