On June 5th in Rome, where the green heart of the planet beats

This is a story that talks about the Moon, the first photo of the Earth (and also the second one actually), about a visionary who in 1968 made up his mind to save the world; and why this year, for the World Environment Daywhich as always, since 1972, has fallen on June 5, some of the greatest scientists and most important climate activists will gather in Rome to send an urgent message. This: we have a plan to change the worldand we don’t want to implement it (only) because perhaps the world is ending, but because in this way the world will be better.

Activists and scientists have been saying these things for a while, in fact, the plan is calling Earth4All, “A Land for All”, and there is a book that explains it well, and a website where you can learn more about the various things to do. If anything, what is surprising is because this thing is done in Rome, the beautiful city that makes us despair for its traffic, the one with often outlawed levels of air pollution, the one with waste that never disappears, the one for which Has the hashtag #faschifo been coined on social media? Why Is Rome about to become for one day the place where the green heart of the planet beats?

There are many plausible answers, as you will see. And basically the easiest, and also one of the most pertinent is: because in Rome there is one of the most authoritative voices in the world when it comes to combating climate change: Pope Francis, who from Laudato Si’ has never stopped making his voice heard “to put an end to this senseless war on Creation”, as he said again after the flood in Romagna. The Pope therefore, but not only.

The other possible and absolutely pertinent answer is that basically this whole climate change thingwhich was previously called global warming, a term that gives a better idea) and the need to change our development model, was born right in Rome. In the spring of 1968. So Aurelius Pecceia Turin economist who had held important roles in large companies such as Fiat and Olivetti, invites a group of scientists to Rome.

With him is the scientific director of the OECD, the Scotsman Alexander King. The place is the most prestigious: the Accademia dei Lincei in Trastevere. The goal, to answer the question: we are sure that this model of development, which puts money and consumption first, is sustainable? Today we know it isn’t, but think back then, to the economic boom that seemed to make everything possible and abundant. At the end of that meeting a group of scientists, not all of them, decides to give life to ad a think tank and decide to call it “Club of Rome”. In that year, on Christmas night, the astronauts of the Apollo mission gave us the first color photo of the Earth, the planet that rises behind the Moon. That photo they will call it “Earthrise” and according to many our environmental awareness begins to be born in that moment in which we see, we perceive the fragile beauty of our planet.

The Club of Rome began work, in 1970 it entrusted a group of young scientists from MIT in Boston with the task of answering that existential question, in the sense that our existence depends on the answer. Meanwhile, in 1972, the United Nations established World Environment Day (on June 5, the premiere in Stockholm). And a few months earlier the first clamorous report of the Club came out. It was called “Limits to Growth” and investigated, using computer models for the first time, the different variables of our living on the planet, from population to food to natural resources, to conclude that there are limits to development. Still in that year, still in December, another Apollo mission gives us the most famous photograph of the Earth: it wasn’t the first whole and it wasn’t the first in color, but it was perhaps the most beautiful ever seen. They call her Big Blue Marble and becomes the symbol of environmentalism.

Fifty-one years have passed, Aurelio Peccei has long since died, the Club of Rome is now led for the first time by two great women, and has recently released another historic report: Earth For All, a practical guide for the survival of the ‘humanity. That’s why the Green&Blue Festival this year is called “A Land for All” and opens in Rome, in the most iconic place in Rome the Colosseum Archaeological Park, before moving to Milan.

But there is another answer to the question: why in Rome? It is a more practical and more current answer. Why this city has decided to focus on energy communities, renewable and self-produced energy in each municipality; because it has a mobility plan that will reduce cars and in particular the most polluting ones, giving us back clean air and spaces to walk; because it is bringing services and culture where the citizens are, so that in every neighborhood there is everything we need within fifteen minutes. Because in short, even the Eternal City is changing. Because, as Peccei said, we are the problem; but also the solution.