What we need to fear is not the end of the world but the end of our world. This is the main and highly significant message launched by Special Ulysses, A wonderful planet - The future to be saved, last appointment on Rai 1 of the scientific dissemination program of Alberto Angela. For this very special occasion Alberto was joined by his father Piero Angela to talk about the state of health of the earth. Climate change, of how much man is endangering his own existence in a world where everything, starting from man himself and from nature, is interconnected.
Forty years of scientific journeys to discover more or less known environments, sometimes on the edge of the world, have been summarized in this episode. Which was a bit like leafing through an album of memories, but also very topical, through the testimony of two exceptional witnesses, the protagonists of these trips Piero and Alberto Angela.
On the top of Etna, a journey into the first chapters of the history of our planet
The first images from the top of theEtna after its recent eruptions. The restless giant, an evocative environment par excellence of the first chapters of the history of our planet. A vulnerable planet, prey to so many instabilities, certainly deriving from nature itself. But increasingly also by the man who has given a strong acceleration to this process of change.
To make the idea in the simplest and clearest way, Alberto Angela has ideally wrapped the world with a transparent film to represent the troposphere surrounding our planet. The troposphere is very thin, he explained, with its thickness of about 20 kilometers. And on this very thin thickness, he added, all the pollution of humanity is concentrated. Hence the departure of this ideal journey to discover the health of the planet. Through extraordinary images of environments, plant and animal species from all over the world, father and son have told a reality in constant danger where everything moves and everything is transformed.
At Speciale Ulisse also the primordial Eden of the great rainforests
In the foreground the fundamental role played by ocean water in pollution and climate change. Among the many problems of the oceans, that of intensive fishing, of the "plastic islands", of the warming of the waters. With one reference, among many others, to corals that turn white and are now in extinction. Then focus on large rainforests, kingdom of biodiversity: they host 50 percent of all living species. A "primordial Eden", as Alberto Angela defined them, who purify the atmosphere with their breath. In Brazil, he said, an area seven times the size of the UK has been cleared for grazing and soybean cultivation.
Alpine glaciers: as fragile as castles of sand
Of course, there are many transformations that do not depend on man, even the Sahara in ancient times was a living environment and today it is among the largest deserts in the world. But precisely for this reason, if we cannot govern the great natural transformations, we must be concerned about how much our action, together with that of nature, can be harmful for the survival of man on planet earth.
The glaciers are retreating and if this phenomenon does not depend only on man, certainly man, and his actions, help to worsen the situation in this sense. The total surface area of Alpine glaciers has increased from 1850 square kilometers to just 4500 between 1790 and today. According to a study in the journal Nature, Greenland lost one million tons of ice per minute in 2019.
The environmentally friendly life of the Mongolian populations and those of Indian Tibet
How to live in a way that is compatible with the environment? A very timely topic. It has been talked about for years, it is the main theme of the newly opened Architecture Biennale from Venice. In his travels a few years ago and which he repeated to us yesterday, Piero Angela told us about the essential and absolutely eco-friendly life of the Mongolian populations who live in the Ger, tents-houses no larger than 30 square meters. Or that of the Buddhist communities of Ladakh, between the Himalayas and Karakorum, a legendary and fairytale kingdom in one of the most isolated areas on the planet. Here nature dominates and man adapts. As well as among the Boshimans of southern Africa. Extreme situations and certainly not feasible.
But, in the light of our daily life so far from that documented in these journeys to the ends of the world, the big questions arise: is it possible to live according to nature? What damage do we create to the environment, which and how many natural resources do we consume? Suffice it to say that 3900 liters of water are consumed to make a T-shirt. How to line up 3900 bottles of water along the entire athletics track of the Stadio dei Marmi in Rome. Alberto Angelo showed them to us concretely, as he explained, among other things, that sending an email involves the emission of 4 grams of carbon dioxide each time.
However, nature takes its course. If we want to continue to be one of its many guests, it depends only on us
Doors open therefore to renewable energies. There are natural spectacles such as that, in Italy, of the lunar landscape of Etna, the protagonist of an incessant process of destruction and rebirth. Or that of the Alcantara Gorges, also in Sicily, a casket of fluid energy that has eroded and sculpted the rock walls. If these shows tell us of great natural energies, why not try to imitate nature's way of proceeding? Small decisions can give rise to what will become the ecological footprint of man on earth. According to Alberto Angela the future alone does not exist. There are many possible futures that depend on our choices, which can no longer have extensions. Nature has done, is and will continue to run its course, independently of man. We men are just one of his many guests. “And if we want to continue to be so - concluded Alberto Angela - it depends only on us”.
