crisi climatica

“Anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases constitute a form of pollution of the marine environment”.This is what the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (Itlos), an independent body of the United Nations, established in an advisory opinion released on 21 May.The opinion is not binding, but the decision has the potential to influence case law.In other words, the decision can be used in future climate litigation at any level to force governments to improve their policies against the climate crisis.The advice comes in response to a group of small island states particularly threatened by climate change.The increase in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere means that a greater quantity reacts with sea water, causing an increase in the acidity of the oceans with absolutely non-negligible consequences on marine life and the balance of ecosystems. Such a decision comes out from a historic hearing, staged in the court in Hamburg, Germany, last September, when small...

Over the last 50 years, oil spills from tankers at sea have decreased by more than 90%.From the peaks of the 1970s, a period in which cases of large oil spills at sea occurred up to once every almost three days, problems relating to oil disasters have in fact decreased drastically, so much so that in 2023 there were just a case of a large spill.Furthermore, the 2023 data is not a mere isolated case, but is part of a general trend of containment of the phenomenon which has been going on for decades and which since the end of the early 2000s has never seen the number of averages and large spills reach double figures.This result was made possible by international policies and scientific progress, which led to the implementation of oil plants and cargo ships which made transport and storage systems more efficient, making them also safer. Data relating to oil spills on board oil vessels are provided by International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation (ITOPF), which publishes a report on the...

The Italian multinational oil company ENI has announced its own industrial development plan for years to come.In particular, the six-legged dog plans to significantly increase the cash circulating in the company, up to 62 billion euros over the four-year plan.As a result, it also plans to increase its revenue even further.In all of this and in spite of the much vaunted energy transition, the central element will remain the exploration and production of fossil fuels.«Upstream production (the set of operational processes from which fossil production activity originates) – we read in the document – ​​is expected to grow at an average annual rate of 3-4% until 2027, extending this growth by a additional year compared to the previous Plan".In short, once again, an industrial strategy in stark contrast with the commitments made by Italy and by the state company itself for the containment of emissions, at least according to the logic, while ENI announces tha...

The Civil Court of Rome has stopped the first lawsuit initiated against the Italian State for failure to comply with the climate crisis.In fact, at first instance, the judges pronounced a sentence according to which the case, the result of the "Last Judgment" campaign - carried out by 203 appellants including associations and private citizens -, was inadmissible due to lack of jurisdiction.In our country, unlike what happens in other European states, there are no courts capable of expressing a verdict on this issue.The procedural process started after a complaint presented against the Italian State by 24 associations, 17 minors and 162 adults, who in the summer of 2021 joined forces to ask concrete actions to combat global warming.Now, following the Court's verdict, the campaign coordinators are promising battle, anticipating that they will challenge the decision. The appellants, in particular, they asked that the State could be required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by...

“If things continue like this, these holiday destinations will have no long-term future.”The recent controversies over statements of the German Minister of Health, Karl Lauterbach, on holiday in Italy during the terrible heat wave in mid-July which saw temperatures constantly above 40 degrees, are symptomatic of a country which, having devoted itself body and soul to tourism for years, he only conceives mockery towards those who dare to say that the king is naked (due to too much heat). If it is true that the news of the following days, with the crises of the big cities like Palermo And Catania and the escapes of tourists from Veneto and from Puglia, took it upon itself to confirm Lauterbach's forecasts in essence, it is equally undeniable that the reaction of the operators was to considerably raise prices, as detected from the survey by the Demoskopica institute.In a short-term projection which however is simply limited to speculating on current tourist flows.Suffice i...