World Environment Day: the colors of the changing climate

On the cover of Republic that you have in your hands are the “Climate Stripes” which make it easier to visualize the impact of overheating that attacks the environment and explains the droughts and floods that continue to affect us, even in Italy. Since in 2016 the climate scientist, Ed Hawkinsimagined a colored spiral to depict climate change – from blue for colder than usual years to red for warmer ones – the climate stripes have now become a concrete representation of climate change, year after year. It is a point of convergence, identification and commitment for all those who share the need for courageous choices, personal and collective, to protect the Earth by helping to seek effective solutions to respond to these transformations, which are taking place in the Mediterranean area at a speed of 20 % above the global average.

Hence our choice, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the World Environment Day – led by the UN and celebrated every year since 5 June 1973 – to underline the commitment of Republic and its readers to converge on the agenda “A Land for All” that is, with concrete commitments to guarantee the safety and prosperity of the inhabitants of the planet with national and international decisions capable of attacking harmful gases and delivering a better world to future generations.

Founding the Club of Rome in 1968, he was the economist Aurelius Peccei to bring together for the first time a group of great international scientists united by the desire to identify a model of sustainable development. From that pioneering challenge to the movement of Fridays for Future of the new generations, from the commitment of global leaders such as Pope Francis to the decision of a multitude of associations and companies to reduce CO₂is the necessary collective awakening of the inhabitants of the Earth the best guarantee of survival for all of us.