From the Azores to Svalbard, the already evident traces of the collapse of the Gulf Stream - The interview

The slowdown of the current that keeps Europe's climate mild is already causing changes for humans.Researcher Lorenzo Colantoni recounts them in his new book

In less than 100 years the Gulf Stream it could collapse.It seemed that the interruption of this flow of warm water that makes Europe's climate mild would be millennia away, but new research in March 2024 has dramatically shortened the prospect.With this omen in the background, the journey of Lorenzo Colantoni, head of research at the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI), journalist and documentary maker, specialized in energy, environment and climate change, ended. Along the Current (Laterza) is the title of the book that tells his journey to discover the stories of climate adaptation in Europe bathed by Caribbean water:from the Azores to Svalbard, passing through Spain, France, the United Kingdom and Scandinavia.Colantoni answers from his home, during a break in Rome between trips that take him - literally - from one part of the world to another.On the wall behind him, two maps.In the compression of the video call image, the outlines of Türkiye and Japan can be glimpsed.It is also full of maps Along the Current.And it is for a specific reason.

Lorenzo, I notice a certain passion for maps.

«I've always had it.The maps, for a job like this, in my opinion work very well, because they tell a double aspect of the issues, which is a bit like the double aspect behind the book itself, namely the scientific one and the human one.The scientific part is equivalent to taking your point of view and getting it out there.So it becomes schematic, from above;put it all on a table and see what's happening.Then there is the human one.As a child I remember seeing this map of the Gulf Stream:experts call it a conveyor belt.To me it looks like the circulatory system of an organism.It made me understand that everything is connected."

He made a journey following the Gulf Stream because it risks collapsing in the coming decades.What would happen?

«Predicting it is very difficult.Starting from the Caribbean coasts of the American continent, the current brings warm water from one side of the Atlantic Ocean to the other and makes areas of Europe habitable that would otherwise be freezing:the United Kingdom, Denmark, Scandinavia.If the current stopped, or weakened, the average temperature in Europe would likely plummet.But the distribution of rainfall would also suffer the consequences of the change.Europe could become much drier, and certain currently inhabited places could become inhospitable.These are very difficult phenomena to predict, because unlike temperature fluctuations, in this case we have no precedents to base ourselves on.On the other hand, this is one of the reasons why I find the topic so fascinating:to try to understand what would happen you have to study history and prehistory, you have to become a bit of a paleontologist and a bit of a geographer."

Yet geography is an increasingly neglected subject…

«The geography and the environmental discourse as a whole are themes that cut across almost everything.At school you should incorporate these subjects into all the others.Only in this way will it be possible to gain knowledge mainstream of climatic and environmental phenomena, and how these influence our lives."

In the book you talk about the meetings you had with many people fighting to adapt to climate change. Almost everyone is convinced that we will succeed.How do you see it?

«The journey I undertook serves precisely to answer this question.I have formed my own opinion which I explain in the last chapter.I believe that in any case, in one way or another, we have to live on this planet.Especially us Europeans, then, are quite adaptable.The main point is that there are people who are very convinced of the answer they have given themselves - whatever it may be -, and others who don't even ask the question.I find it absurd."

Why?

«Before starting this journey I thought I would meet many "deniers".I haven't actually met any.If you are a Spanish farmer and you see that your tomatoes ripen a month and a half earlier than they did twenty years ago, you cannot believe that climate change is not happening.Yet many stop there, they simply take note of it, even though they live it every day, they don't ask themselves how serious the situation will be and what they will have to do to adapt."

On his journey he met many people working to adapt to change.Who gave you hope?

«There are two meetings that particularly touched me.The first was in Scotland.There, in the 1970s they found North Sea oil and its extraction allowed the Scots to emerge from a precarious economic situation that had lasted for centuries.Not only that, it also gave them a basis on which to claim independence.There is still oil, but Scotland is dismantling its extraction platforms to transform itself into a renewable power.On the Orkney Islands, in the far north, I met some kids from the university center that deals with renewables.It comes to mind because I've seen how much they believe in it.There are solutions and they want to implement them.Not in a corporate way or corporate, to make a profit, but because they care about the environment, theirs and everyone's."

The other?

«The other was in Norway, with the Sami:the last indigenous people of Europe.Living in the Arctic, they are more exposed to climate change, as the region is warming much faster than the rest of the world.Their culture has been put to the test by 50 years of Scandinavianization.Now, the ice on which their way of life is based is disappearing.Yet they fight and fight hard, and they never lose hope.”

Was there a moment when you lost hope?

«In Doñana, Spain – where there is a nature reserve threatened by desertification, urbanization and intensive agriculture – I found myself faced with a situation so blocked on a social and political level that I asked myself:“but if we are unable to act in such a serious context, when will we do it?”.In reality now they seem to have reached an agreement, but while I was writing the book the situation was tragic.I was there in the hottest week of the hottest month of the hottest summer Spain has ever experienced, that of 2023.It was 47 degrees and for the second consecutive year the lagoons of the nature reserve had dried up, something that had never happened before.The tension was palpable, because Spain had the rotating presidency of the European Council and was pushing to do so approve there Nature Restoration Law, and in the meantime early elections had also been called, with the hope of stopping Vox's advance.There as in many other parts of Europe including Italy, the party leverages the farmers' anger, who see themselves deprived of the right, obtained mainly since the 1980s in both legal and illegal ways, to drain water reserves to irrigate intensive crops.I had very low morale there.I couldn't understand this immobility.I wanted to scream:“But can't you see that the world is burning in front of us?”

As he writes in the book, we live in a historical period where it seems that "either you are with the flamingos or you are with the farmers".How do you overcome this phase?

«The one between nature and agriculture is a false contrast, in theory.But we live in a world where agriculture suffers from dependency problems.It depletes the soil and soaks it with pesticides;it impoverishes the laborers to enrich a few.Farmers are in a difficult position and have narrow profit margins.Only instead of dealing with large-scale distribution, which is the cause of a good part of their problems, they choose to spend the money in a thousand ways, almost never encouraging more sustainable agriculture.They point the finger at those who seem to them to be enemies:the activists.They do it in the name of defending a tradition that doesn't actually exist:our grandparents did not practice intensive agriculture, they did not extract water from the aquifer at current rates, they did not use today's pesticides, they did not grow avocados and strawberries as happens now in the Spanish desert.And you just need to go to a place like the Almería greenhouses to realize it.There is a rotten, plastic smell, while I was there I felt that nature was dead there.None of this can be perceived in the traditional vineyards and olive groves, which have truly remained as our grandparents cultivated them."

You haven't met any, but if you spoke to someone who didn't believe all this, what would you tell them?

«I would take him and tell him to look around, because today the climate crisis is more evident than ever.But I would try to understand it.He certainly has reasons behind his beliefs.There is an urgent need to rebuild trust in science and authority.But it must be done democratically.I want the denier to become an activist, not to feel like an idiot.And the only way to do this is to give people the tools to understand what they hear and what they read."

On the cover:Lorenzo Colantoni / Shot from a marine fauna study vessel off the coast of the Azores