Warning from Nobel Parisi: “The increase in GDP is in contrast with the climate”

A warning and a political-economic manifesto viewed with the eyes of science and of those who know the “understanding of complex systems” enough to win the Nobel. This is what the Italian physicist Giorgio Parisi actually delivered at the PreCop26 meeting of parliamentarians. Speaking in the Chamber of Deputies, the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics said: “Allow me to add an economic consideration. The gross domestic product of individual countries is the basis of political decisions, and the mission of governments seems to be to to increase GDP as much as possible, an objective that is in profound contrast with the arrest of climate change “. In his speech – in the presence of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella and also the Speaker of the US House Nancy Pelosi – Parisi said he wanted to make his own “some of the words that Robert Kennedy pronounced on March 18, 1968 at the University of Kansas: ‘ gross national product includes air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clean our highways of carnage. Includes special locks for our doors and prisons for people who break them. Includes destruction of redwoods. and the loss of our natural wonder as a result of chaotic development … In short, it measures everything, except what makes life worth living. And it can tell us everything about America, except because we are proud to be Americans, and it is so in everything the world'”. Therefore, in view of the United Nations conference on climate change scheduled in Glasgow from 31 October to 12 November, the new Italian Nobel Prize in Physics has launched a very strong indication for the global economy: “Gross national product is not a good measure of the economy. It captures the quantity but not the quality of growth. ” “Many different indices have been proposed – recalled Parisi – including the human development index and the sustainable economic well-being index”. But, he noted, “if gross national product remains the center of attention, our future will be grim. The politicians, journalists, economists who plan our future and monitor the progress that has been made, must use an index. that considers other aspects besides the gross national product “. In his intense speech, Giorgio Parisi “touched upon many topics: energy, scientific research, social justice, economics and education of young people”. “Addressing these problems and solving them is your task with the contribution of everyone, especially the children”, he said addressing the audience of Montecitorio. President of the class of Physical, Mathematical and Natural Sciences of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and full professor of Theoretical Physics at Sapienza in Rome, Parisi was awarded the Nobel Prize “for the discovery of the interaction between disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from the scale atomic to planetary “. And it is precisely to avoid all the ‘disorder’ that climate change will bring to Earth that the scientist began by stating: “Humanity must make essential choices, it must strongly combat climate change”. “We all know that the pitiful doctor made the purulent sore” he observed again warning that “if the temperature” of our planet increases more than 2 ° we enter an unknown land in which there may also be other phenomena that we have not foreseen that can get worse. the situation enormously. For example, colossal forest fires like the Amazon that would catastrophically release huge amounts of greenhouse gases, but when would they happen? The oceans that are currently absorbing many of the greenhouse gases we emit, but will this phenomenon continue in an earth two degrees warmer? The increase in temperature is not controlled only by direct emissions but is mitigated by many regulation mechanisms that could cease to function with the increase in temperature “warned Giorgio Parisi.” While the lower limit of 2 ° is something on which we can be quite sure, it is much more difficult to understand which is the most pessimistic scenario: it could be much, much worse than what we imagine “is the scenario put on the table of PreCop26 by the Italian Nobel Prize for Physics. (by Andrena d’Aquino )