The emergence of energy and environmental concerns
The love of nature and the desire to protect it have a long history. Particularly unspoiled areas had been protected for centuries, mainly to provide hunting grounds reserved for kings, their courts, and the elite. For example, the Abruzzo National Park, in the Italian regions of Lazio and Molise, is the patriarch among Italian parks. The idea of creating a protected area, following in the footsteps of the great American park of Yellowstone, had already begun in the late 1800s, when this territory became the exclusive hunting reserve of the royal family of Savoy, just like the other famous Italian park: Gran Paradiso. In the first half of the century, interventions were aimed at conserving the landscape (which in the immediate post-war period was also included in the Constitution as an asset protected by the Republic, together with historical and artistic heritage), as in the creation of the Circeo National Park in the 1930s.
However, it was in the early 1970s that Italy, and all Western countries, began to develop an interest in environmental issues, which has since grown steadily and is now in full swing. Attention has shifted from the local scale, within a radius of a few kilometers around industries and urban centers, to the regional, national, continental, and global scales. The interest of politicians and the media first focused on the dangers of chemicals emitted directly by human activities, such as sulfur dioxide; then on substances not emitted but generated by photochemical reactions in the atmosphere, such as urban ozone; and more recently on the study of the alleged impact of anthropogenic emissions on the entire Earth’s climate.
These ecological and environmental issues were joined by parallel studies on overpopulation and resource depletion. Two books in particular were hugely successful and strongly influenced public opinion: The Population Bomb by Paul R. Ehrlich, published in 1968, and The Limits to Growthby the Club of Rome, published in 1972. What did they predict?
In the first – The Population Bomb – the author declared that the battle to feed humanity had been lost and that there would be a severe food shortage. He predicted that 65 million Americans would starve to death between 1980 and 1989 and that, by 1999, the population of the United States would fall to 22.6 million. He added that the problems in the US would be relatively minor compared to those in the rest of the world. These projections were fortunately wrong, but they created a lasting impression of uncomfortable uncertainty that persisted in large segments of public opinion even after the highly successful decade of the 1980s, which ended with major economic developments around the world, a substantial decrease in global poverty, and the end of the Cold War. It should be remembered that the author of these unfounded predictions, Paul R. Ehrlich, which many believe were made purely for sensationalism and exhibitionism, is still hailed today as a great environmental and conservation visionary.
These were not isolated predictions. Public opinion has been bombarded for decades with similar fatalistic and millenarian announcements. In the second famous book, The Limits to Growth, it was predicted that the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987, zinc by 1990, oil by 1992, and copper, lead, and natural gas by 1993. And even for aluminum, which is one of the main components of the Earth’s crust, the authors claimed that resources would be depleted between 2005 and 2021!
The end of the honeymoon
In the 1970s, attention to environmental issues, particularly air quality, attracted everyone’s attention. Even industry (for example, in Italy, ENEL and IBM) began to sponsor studies and research, measurement campaigns, university funding, and even created computerized environmental research centers.
But the honeymoon and general enthusiasm for environmental protection were short-lived. In just a few years, the Italian and European Left managed to frame the debate in its favor, establishing that environmental problems were, of course, the result of the sins of capitalism and that pollution could only be combated through government control of industrial activities and, more generally, of the economy. This was an astonishing interpretation that can still be heard today in certain circles, despite historical facts and clear evidence to the contrary. We know that the worst industrial pollution in Europe in the 20th century occurred in the socialist countries of Eastern Europe; and today we know that communist China has one of the worst levels of air pollution in the world. But too often, facts do not matter. It was very clear, from the early 1970s, how the game would be played: with the immediate politicization of the environmental movement, which was then dominated by a strong anti-Western, anti-capitalist, Third Worldist component and, unfortunately, later also by a worrying anti-human component.
The honeymoon was over. Politics had polluted science. And, unfortunately, things got worse and worse, decade after decade, even after the fall of the ‘evil empire’ in 1991. In fact, today’s cause du jour is climate change, a theory championed worldwide by the Left. It is a perfect theory for allowing the state to apply heavy taxation and almost Orwellian controls on all fundamental aspects of existence: transportation, food, industry, and heating.
The fight against air pollution: a success story
Few people realize the great improvements in air quality that have been achieved in recent decades in the United States and Europe. Often, the encouraging data is kept hidden; no one talks about it.
Measures to protect the environment and combat pollution began with rational and scientific measures, particularly for the protection of human health in urban and industrial environments. Since the 1970s, precise chemical measurements have been carried out to assess the degree of environmental contamination. Computer models were developed to simulate and understand the spread of pollution. Maximum emission levels for industrial chimneys and cars were established and periodically reduced. All these activities were strongly based on the scientific method and were applied on a local scale (e.g., in an industrial area or city). These were the guidelines for the environmental revolution of the 1970s and 1980s. These measures were very expensive, but they bore fruit.
Take, for example, air quality in the United States, where hundreds of air pollution monitoring stations were installed in the 1970s and are still in operation today. The most recent reports show that between 1970 and 2017, total emissions of the six main pollutants (known as criteria pollutants) fell by 73%, while the US economy grew more than threefold. A closer look at the most recent progress shows that between 1990 and 2017, average concentrations of the most harmful air pollutants decreased significantly:
Sulfur dioxide (hourly averages) ↓ 88%
Lead (3-month averages) ↓ 80%
Carbon monoxide (8-hour averages) ↓ 77%
Nitrogen dioxide (annual averages) ↓ 56%
Fine particulate matter (daily averages) ↓ 40%
Total particulate matter (daily averages) ↓ 34%
Urban ozone (8-hour averages) ↓ 22%
Similar encouraging data can also be found in Europe, especially in the former communist countries of the East, where extremely polluting industries had long been tolerated. In short, these data show a success that should be celebrated by the media and taught in schools, instead of terrifying young people by describing our planet as sick, polluted, and about to be destroyed by terrifying climate disasters.
Global climate change
The idea that anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) can disrupt the climate balance of our planet is fairly recent and stems mainly from the calculations and hypotheses of Manabe and Wetherald (1975). Historically, CO2 had never been considered a pollutant, quite the contrary. This substance is an essential nutrient for the plant world. In fact, the recent increase in CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere, from 315 ppm in 1958 to 430 ppm in 2025, has improved global agricultural productivity.
However, CO2, together with other substances called greenhouse gases (such as methane), has the characteristic of trapping heat in the atmosphere that would otherwise be dispersed into space, thus creating a potential increase in the Earth’s temperature. But by how much?
Temperature measurements, taken for centuries with thermometers and, more recently, collected by satellites, have never verified this hypothesis. All temperature measurements to date have shown fairly normal trends and fluctuations, i.e., a planet that emerged from the last ice age about 12,000 years ago, warming up and thus creating optimal conditions for human life; a planet that also emerged two centuries ago from a worrying medieval mini-ice age, which fortunately ended in the mid-19th century. These are all natural phenomena, in which humans play no part (although, at the local level, urbanization and overbuilding certainly create heat islands).
Recent climate alarmism is based solely on climate simulation models projected into future decades. It is these mathematical models, and not measurements, that give us the apocalyptic scenarios regurgitated daily by politicians, bureaucrats, journalists, and adventurers desperately seeking visibility, such as Al Gore and Greta Thunberg. The results of these mathematical models are periodically presented in voluminous reports published by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – a bureaucratic, third-world bandwagon with a huge budget and very ambitious goals.
The IPCC’s climate models cover a huge range of future climate scenarios, from the most moderate to the most apocalyptic, thus giving readers the opportunity to extract and use whatever suits them best. Of course, it is the most extreme (and most implausible) scenarios that many journalists then use to alarm the population, especially young people, as Carlo MacKay explains well here.
When, at the beginning of this century, temperature measurements did not show the dramatic increase that had been predicted by alarmists in the 1990s, the terminology was cleverly changed to ‘global change’, thus attributing every possible negative effect recorded on the planet to the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere: heat waves or cold spells, hurricanes, avalanches, droughts, floods, malaria, and so on.
Almost everyone jumped headlong into this issue. Large international organizations, first and foremost the United Nations, immediately began launching appeals, organizing conferences, creating task forces, funding studies, and beating the drums of alarmism. Many scientific researchers saw their research funds increase dramatically; all they had to do was include the right keywords in their funding proposals. State apparatuses, especially those of “rich countries,” immediately saw the opportunity to exploit climate alarmism to increase direct and indirect taxes on citizens and amplify state intervention in the regulation of all human activities, as well as to send huge amounts of public money to non-state entities and validation agencies whose purpose is to prop up the current narrative.
The awakening of reason
Faced with the absurdities and extremism surrounding this issue in recent decades, there is now an awakening of public opinion that is finally beginning to worry, for example, about huge increases in electricity bills and the possible destruction of key sectors of European industry for unclear and highly questionable purposes. Do we really want to destroy one of Europe’s most important jewels—automobile manufacturing—to “save the planet”? Do we really want to discourage many young people from having children in order to reduce our CO2 footprint?
It doesn’t take much to realize that all this is madness. As shown in this graph, even if the most alarmist climate theories were true (and they are not), all our actions would be useless. The exponential and unstoppable growth of CO2 emissions in China and India will wipe out all our virtuous intentions. We will suffer enormous damage without any benefit.
Fortunately, something is happening. In Italy, we have had courageous scientific researchers who have published interesting and well-documented articles: for example, the book Clima, Basta Catastrofismi, a very comprehensive collection from a scientific point of view. A book that criticizes climate models, but also talks about solar radiation, geology, paleontology, geomorphology and—in a pleasantly interesting chapter—discusses the role of climate in the history of vines and wine; all topics that contribute to fueling strong skepticism towards the climate alarmism that surrounds us. In Italy, we should also mention the magazine 21mo Secolo, which specializes in presenting “countercurrent” critiques and assessments.
In the United States, with President Trump calling the IPCC studies “a hoax,” many people who previously remained silent for fear of professional repercussions now do not hesitate to show some skepticism, at least toward the most extreme climate projections. In particular, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), now headed by Chris Wright, has just published a new assessment of climate science written by five scientists who have long criticized many aspects of this science. Specifically, these scientific researchers concluded that climate change is real and deserves attention, but it is not the greatest threat facing humanity. That distinction belongs to global energy poverty. They also add that, with regard to extreme weather events, data in the United States does not show long-term trends. Alarmist claims of an increase in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and droughts are not supported by historical data.
Finally, after decades of “groupthink,” we now have scientific and official criticism, formulated by government agencies, against certain aspects of climate science and policy. This will motivate debate and discussion.
It is also encouraging that, just a few days ago, one of the billionaires—Bill Gates—who for decades has been lavishing money on the most alarmist climate research and telling us that the climate and the survival of humanity were in grave danger, surprised everyone with rational and wise statements. Now—finally—he tells us that climate change is a serious problem, but it is not the end of civilization. He believes that scientific innovation will slow it down and that we need to shift our priorities from focusing on limiting temperature increases to fighting poverty and preventing disease.
Perhaps, however, the most encouraging sign of the reawakening of rationality in dealing with climate and environmental issues is the role of big finance, which, after decades of pressure to favor “green” investments, is now beating a retreat. Issues of green bonds in the eurozone stopped at €44 billion in the first nine months of 2025, down 15% from €52 billion last year. Savers have realized that investments labeled as ‘good’ offer lower returns than traditional ones and do not always deliver on their promises. The numbers speak louder than ideology.
