Dealing with the earth and trees, learning to cultivate, prune, cutwood: as an environmental journalist if I had to give advice to mycolleagues it would be to move to the countryside, like I did. In thisway the studies and data that we continually cite and report take on amore real, concrete and practical meaning. Before moving to thecountryside I was already dealing with global warming, its causes andeffects, I spoke with the people affected but it was as if I was missingsomething. Now I understand the feeling that I have most often recordedamong those who live or work in the countryside: fear. Because extremeweather events have always existed but today they are not only moreintense and more extensive but also safe. Sooner or later it happens toanyone and everywhere a very long drought that reduces the size of theolives and decreases the production of grain, a devastating flood thatruins the harvest, a wave of wind that overturns the huts and breaks thetrees, a persistent rain which makes grapes and vegetables soggy. Wehave to adapt, they say. And this is what those who practiceself-production and those who implement forms of organic, regenerativeand permaculture agriculture are doing with enormous effort, without anysupport from the state. Even more than in other sectors, in fact, inagriculture the battleground, it must be said, is enormouslyconflictual. Agriculture is the most exposed sector and, at the sametime, its pre-eminent model, what we call intensive agriculture, whichwants to make the most of the productive capacity of the land in acapitalist perspective, is among the main culprits of climate collapse.In recent days the Copernicus climate change service, the EuropeanUnion's climate monitoring institute, has recorded worrying data, aheadof the darkest forecasts: for the first time in the history of humanitythe average global temperature has increased 2 degrees centigradecompared to pre-industrial levels. The breach occurred on 17 and 18November but the shared opinion is that such breaches will occur moreand more often. On the other hand, 2023, in the period between Januaryand October, and therefore well before it ended, had already become thehottest year ever. Without considering that according to the latestreport from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), governments'emission reduction plans are so inadequate that they will lead ustowards an increase of 3 degrees over the course of this century. Andthe UN does not say one thing, that is, the most basic thing: that thoseplans cannot be trusted in any case, because they are downward promisesthat will be further reduced by the real politik enslaved by theinterests of the few to the detriment of the many.In this sense, agriculture is one of the most striking examples: theannual report of the Higher Institute for Environmental Protection(ISPRA) confirms that agriculture alone in Italy contributes toapproximately 9% of total emissions. The greatest responsibilities areto be found in intensive farming, which alone represents 72% ofagricultural emissions. We know where to act, therefore, and we know howto do it, but we don't do it. The monstrous consumption of meat anddairy products, driven by overproduction, must become a centralpolitical issue. Compared to the subversive demands, the progressivefront on this front has implemented numerous mitigation strategies: frommanure management, through anaerobic digestion systems, to precisionfertilization practices, from the use of compost as a natural fertilizerto the use of renewable sources to produce energy. These are allappreciable choices, which must be implemented, the usual good practiceswhich however do not change almost anything in terms of reversing thestructures, and which are indeed increasingly internalized bylarge-scale production, happy to reposition itself as "sustainable".Proof of this is the ruthless battle that the Italian industrial lobbieshave been waging for months against the European regulation onpackaging, "guilty" of wanting to encourage the reuse of containerscompared to disposable packaging also for food and drinks. It was alarge part of the "agri-food chain" that rose up, incapable ofrethinking itself and questioning its model which is based onlarge-scale organized distribution. This is where we must stop sowingconflict: the countryside can no longer be seen only as places toproduce what is needed to feed the cities. We must reclaim the land, thelands, occupy them and redistribute them, abandoning the cities where weare dependent on everything. In any case, in the meantime we must learnto deal with irreversible climate change. Even on this front, that ofadaptation, progressivism offers immediate solutions that appear to becommon sense: bring forward the harvest and postpone some harvests (suchas tomatoes, which this year grew until late October), diversify andintegrate crops to cope with a lower yield. Here too the need to sowconflict emerges: from access to water to opposition to overbuilding,what is needed is not to learn to live with the climate crisis but to doeverything to stop it. Those who live in the camps have always known howto adapt, facing all kinds of problems. What is needed, again, is tostart from the effects of the climate crisis to fight its causes. In thecity as in the countryside.https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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