Dear students who are on strike for the climate, we scientists and scholars of climate change and the environment offer you all our support. We are united by the desire to study reality, and one of the realities that unfortunately emerges today is the difficulty for human beings to question themselves: this explains the attacks against you and the unjust accusations, such as that of having soiled a square that you have left very clean or to be puppets in the hands of adults who would use you – these are accusations that serve, to those who invent them, to avoid becoming aware of the climate crisis in which we find ourselves.
It is an all too human reflection, no one is pleased to know that our planet risks becoming inhospitable, with a dramatic decline in the resources at our disposal. But it is not morally acceptable to publicly deny the scientific data, as we have happened to read in recent days. We can say with certainty that if you read about someone who denies that climate change depends on man, or who denies that it is a serious danger, he is not talking about reality, but about the difficulty in accepting it. And yours, our job is to help spread this important awareness. Because there are no enemies on the climate, only interlocutors to be persuaded to reality.
We therefore ask you to try together to persuade the political class, to go together to meet it. Before the 2018 elections, we joined a committee, “Science in Voting”, to convince all political forces to make the endangered environmental context the center of all other policies – and we proposed a transversal legislature agreement, believing that many actions are important and urgent whatever the membership in parties or movements: we have indeed encountered some availability, but there is still a widespread awareness and consequently adequate action.
Politicians need not fear us: politics is the art of organizing social life, and politicians have the grand, historic task of organizing the ecological transition. It is up to us to remind them that there are, however, two basic elements to respect, which Italy has already obliged itself by joining the Paris Agreement:
– a much greater reduction in our emissions than currently foreseen, essential to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 ° C compared to the pre-industrial era, and therefore the most serious catastrophes (and of course an indispensable adaptation to changes no longer avoidable);
– a substantial commitment to the poorest countries, according to the principle of climate justice, since they are the least responsible and most affected by climate tampering, and must be helped to develop by renouncing the use of fossil fuels, which we Westerners are instead it was allowed.
Politicians will naturally be stimulated by a public opinion aware of the climate crisis and its solutions, and will in turn be able to stimulate citizens to achieve this awareness – supported by those who form consciences and collective thought, teachers and journalists, which has a special duty to achieve awareness of climate tampering and possible solutions to the crisis.
Dear students, the road ahead of us is difficult, but clear. Do we want, if you think it appropriate, to travel it together?
“Science to the Vote” Committee
Antonello Pasini, physicist and climatologist, CNR (Coordinator)
Carlo Barbante, chemist and climatologist, CNR and Ca ‘Foscari University, Venice
Leonardo Becchetti, economist, University of Tor Vergata, Rome
Alessandra Bonoli, transition engineer, University of Bologna
Carlo Cacciamani, physicist and meteorologist, Civil Defense
Stefano Caserini, environmental engineer, Polytechnic of Milan
Claudio Cassardo, meteorologist and climatologist, University of Turin
Sergio Castellari, physicist and meteorologist, INGV
Andrea Filpa, urban planner, University of Roma Tre
Francesco Forastiere, epidemiologist, CNR
Fausto Guzzetti, geologist, CNR
Vittorio Marletto, physicist and agrometeorologist, ARPAE Emilia-Romagna and AIAM
Cinzia Perrino, biologist and air quality expert, CNR
Nicola Pirrone, engineer and expert on global changes and atmospheric pollution, CNR
Mario Motta, energy engineer, Milan Polytechnic
Gianluca Ruggieri, environmental engineer, University of Insubria
Federico Spanna, agrometeorologist, Piedmont Region and AIAM
Stefano Tibaldi, physicist and meteorologist, CMCC
Francesca Ventura, physicist and agrometeorologist, University of Bologna and AIAM