With this environmentalism we will never win. Interview with Francesco Rutelli

“Rather than building the consensus in favor of decarbonisation, Europe is building the consensus against. We need to talk less about taxes and more about good jobs”, says the founder of La Margherita

He has written an optimistic book about how to tackle the enormous challenge of climate change and the energy transition, but he is pessimistic about how things are going. “An enormous fact is happening – he tells Il Foglio Francis Rutelli – instead of building the consensus for decarbonisation, Europe is building the consensus against”. Rutelli in his long public life was an environmental activist, the first green mayor in Italy who filled Rome with electric buses more than any city in the world, the Minister of Culture who created the Landscape Code. Now at the center of his essay, “The green century” (Solferino), which speaks of the urgency of the ecological transition, there is reflection on the methods adopted which are proving to be unpopular. And without consensus there can be no transition. “Europe is trapping itself on the climate issue and on the transitionbecause it has given a prescriptive and hyper-regulatory setting that transmits negative messages to the people”.