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by Antonella Alba 04 June 2020 5 June 1972 was an important day for the environment: the first UN summit began in Sweden . The summit ended with the Stockholm Declaration, which defined 26 principles on human rights and responsibilities in relation to the environment. Also in Sweden a few months ago the FridaysForFuture movement was born led by the then 15-year-old student Greta Thunberg , who in a few months became a symbol of the fight against climate change and in general considered a champion of the environment.When the coronavirus pandemic paralyzed the entire planet known to us, each of us in our own way came to terms with our own environmental awareness. Scientists have established the animal nature of Covid 19, but many have wondered about the consequences of man's hand on Nature, such as the wild deforestation that according to data released by the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) in Amazonia - the largest rainforest, considered the lung of the Earth - recorded a record increase of + 64% compared to April last year, and a + 55% on the first three months of 2020 compared to 2019 with 1.202 square kilometers of forest damaged . A phenomenon that therefore, despite Covid, does not stop putting the health of the Planet and that of man at risk.
We ask Mario Tozzi, popularizer and geologist, what happened to those principles sanctioned in 1972 and if they still make sense today
Some of those principles ended up in the Earth Charter , others in the Environmental Declarations , for me the most important one is what it concerns the well-being of the 'sapiens' (men ed). This well-being is only there if the planet is well, but it also sees the least accepted, because if there is no healthy biosphere , man can no longer be healthy. The problem is that we think we are self-sufficient, that we are enough for ourselves, everything is seen in a material way with the illusion of being self-sufficient. It is an important message but also the most disregarded.
Europe has established the 'Green Deal', that is, a sort of roadmap to make the economy sustainable, starting from the consideration that environmental problems become opportunities. Do you think it is achievable?
Yes, I think that with the amount of billions invested by Europe this being achievable. In my opinion, when man sees a deal, he may well be able to reconvert the route, for example by discarding fossil fuels forever and moving towards economic cycles powered by renewable energies, cycles that close, non-linear, that have very few scraps.
Climate change and pandemic: is there a connection?
No, climate change favors diseases such as malaria or yellow fever, but I would not put it on the same level as pandemics. In viral pandemics there are two factors: triggering and vehiculation . SarsCov, Ebola, or the new Covid 19 have to do with phenomena such as deforestation.
Meaning?
If you remove an important habitat, such as a forest, to some animal species such as bats - which are also very strong species - these stressed by the lack of their habitat, instead of perishing, they strengthen their immune system and when with their saliva they will go to bite a banana or a mouse, that saliva with an enormous viral load affects the anthropic cycles, our stuff, piece of city, piece of breeding. In English it is called 'spillover' meaning jump of species (like the last book by David Quammen). The latest pandemics are all like this, Ebola has spread through monkeys, pigs, through bats in the Nipah epidemic in Malaysia.
After the trigger there is the transmission that is the way in which the virus propagates: in the case of Covid 19 it has been established that air pollution has contributed to its ideal propagation, and if we think that the Po Valley is the most polluted area from pm10 in Europe and the Chinese province of Hubei , from where the coronavirus has spread, is among the most polluted in the world, it is not difficult to understand why the inhabited areas were most affected by the virus.
But do you agree with Greta and the FridaysforFuture movement?
I got to know the guys of the movement when they came to Italy, they invited me to talk to each other, I was the only adult. I think they are quite consistent, guys with a very high horizon of struggle, 'the world that we have lent to you as you are giving it back to us?' this is the slogan with which they identify. Now thanks to them all, even the young, have understood that climate change depends on man. They are right, aren't they?
"Every year thousands of plant and animal species disappear that we will no longer be able to know, that our children will not be able to see. For our sake, they will not give glory to God with their existence. We do not have the right", wrote Pope Francis in a tweet on May 22nd
Pope Francis seems to be the only man of international stature to say the same things that scientists say, in his encyclical 'Laudato Sì' he says it clearly and he is the only one who does it.
Paradoxically, is Covid giving us a life lesson?
That lesson is already unfulfilled, it made us understand that there is something that is not animal. He has an RNA , not a DNA , and is able to put the whole of humanity in check, billions of people, it is extraordinary, it is a strategy of Crazy Nature. But be careful, our extermination does not suit him, no virus is worth it, he wants us to stay alive to replicate as much as possible.
Is there therefore the risk that, for Darwinian memory, only the strongest survive?
No, not the strongest, but the most suitable, that is, the one that implements the best cooperation strategies in order to survive which is what all evolved animals do, otherwise why should it be stronger? The virus took advantage of the situation, he would have remained in the forest, he came among us 'sapiens' especially in the cities in the hands of men.
The scientific community seems divided on some important points, is it possible to give certainties? For example, will there be a second wave in the fall?
In my opinion, scientists should not do interviews on television but talk to each other through scientific publications. On climate change everyone agrees that it is due to human hand. As far as Covid is concerned, the debate is there because it is a new thing, but from a scientific point of view, that said on TV counts for zero, we know little of this virus so it is impossible to know how it can evolve.
But how do you do it with public opinion? people want to know ..
Of course the debate always takes, but it is also true that we have heard everything, for example that the virus was built in the laboratory, that it is the result of a conspiracy, you have to be very careful with this type of hypothesis unsupported by scientific evidence, scientists say the origin of the virus is completely natural.
Has the virus weakened?
Of the fact that it has weakened, I have found no trace in scientific journals, no one has written that it has changed, if it is latent, the numbers must tell us, I regulate the numbers, I cannot do anything else. In China, for example, they declared the emergency closed when they did not register any other infection and only then did they close the hospitals, in Italy unfortunately we are still 70 dead per day.
Apart from the numbers, how much intuition does it take to listen and if anything solve the problems of our planet Earth, of Nature?
Only genes have had the ability to measure themselves with intuition in the scientific field. Let's take Einstein. He put together intuition and scientific data and those discoveries have marked revolutionary steps from which other progress and brick on brick have sprung, corroborating that intuition has gone on, but to go on it takes data. Science goes by revolutions, Einstein with his intuition forever tied time and space on which other scientists then worked for decades. A good researcher does not necessarily have to be a genius, but he must be a systemic scholar, be fussy, then if he has a good stroke of genius.
Can we hope for a vaccine?
I think the vaccine is important, but maybe it won't get there. You see you have never found a vaccine for Sarscov1, much less for HIV, but it is the therapy that can work, in the case of coronavirus a definitive cure on the complex of the pathologies created, first of all cardiovascular ones, it can already be the road, as long as it works.
Are you afraid of Covid, how did you react to isolation?
No, I'm not afraid. I dealt with it with the only possible rules for me: physical distancing and self-protection , then there may be mistakes but you have to be careful. I think it was possible to intervene earlier in the closure of the red areas and that in Lombardy the problem remains because in reality we never really stopped. But apart from the inevitable economic disaster, after all we have been good.