Amateur Climate Change

In my comeback from the long blog-summer vacations I wish to mention my last week trip to Rome. I went for a business meeting and it was a two days journey in witch only the first one was in Rome itself. It was my first time in this ancient and full-of-history city and I really enjoyed walking along the remaining of the old empire, the lively squares and the renacentist buildings. Apart from the tourist enjoyment, two questions striked my, related to climate change:

The first one was the repeated advertising about a share holding operation on Enel company, the main Italian energy company. I do not know the real meaning of the advertisement or the company but everything was very green in the ads and main picture was about a field of photovoltaic panels. Ecology and renewables are considered closely linked and if they are regarded helpful to get good image. In my opinion this is essentially a positive progress in spite of its several drawbacks (“many not very greens pretend to be very green”, interesting subject for another post). So I got quite happy for that.

In the other hand,the second issue was negative, a repeating negative one. My Italian colleagues explained my that most Romans were firm car users, they distrust public transport for not being reliable or punctual. This makes the city more chaotic and of course produces several extra CO2 tons per year. Moreover, those attitude problems are difficult to solve and require time and patience, it is very easy to enter a endless loop: I do not use public transport because it is not good, public transport is not improved because is too expensive in part because it is not used, and so on. But who should break those dynamics? Governments with convinced politics, like in the case of public debt reduction? Or convinced citizens who intend to change the mind of their policy makers?

Like the old times in which all the ways leaded to Rome, I think any way is good but we have to be fast because we may have less time than we think.