LUCCIOLE #6 - GIOVANNI MORI

A NEWSLETTER BY VOICE OVER

Today, we try to tell you a story of scientific research and activism, of civic engagement and political commitment. It’s an inspiring story because it shows us that mobilizing makes a difference and that participating in the political life of your country, city, or within the European Union can have a positive impact on all species on this planet, including the most destructive one, ours.

But before we start, we need to debunk some common misconceptions and provide you with some fundamental information.

Let’s begin.

Did you know that Italy continues to be the European country with, according to data provided by the European Environment Agency, the highest number of premature deaths caused by air pollution, with 63,000 deaths each year?

And did you know that, according to the MobilitAria report, premature deaths due to air pollution in Milan are 2,059 and in Rome 2,755?

And did you know that nearly 80% of environmental regulations come from Europe? If we have regulations that protect public health and the environment, it is thanks to the mobilization of thousands of people who have taken to the streets for the climate and the planet.

Environmental movements, like Fridays For Future, have pushed the European Commission to approve the European Green Deal in 2019, an imperfect but irreplaceable plan because, for the first time, the European Union has pledged to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, meaning to zero out its net greenhouse gas emissions. The guidelines of the European Green Deal are essentially three: to eliminate net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050; to decouple economic growth from resource use; and to ensure that no person or place is left behind.

But did you know that Italy is the only country in the European Union that still does not have a climate law? And that the most successful emission reduction policies in the world are those that have taxed the biggest polluters? So, it would be enough to start with the three simple proposals from Jet dei Ricchi.

And finally, did you know that the energy transition – the shift from non-renewable fossil fuels like gas and oil to renewable energies – is a historic opportunity, but if there is no capable, competent, and visionary policy, it will be managed by a few private entities at the expense of many?

That’s why we need to return to engaging with politics, because, as Giovanni Mori explains to us, the firefly of this issue of Voice Over, “it is politics that must show the way, guide society” and lead processes of social, economic, and environmental transformation with a vision of both the present and the future.

This is his voice. 

Thank you for being here with us.

Happy reading! 

The Voice Over Team

The Voice of This Issue

Giovanni Mori is an environmental engineer, science communicator, and climate activist. He holds a Master’s in Energy Engineering – studied between Trento, Bolzano, and the Polytechnic University of Lausanne. He produces the podcast News from Planet Earth for LifeGate, was part of Fridays For Future Italy, and was an independent candidate for the European Parliament with Alleanza Verdi e Sinistra. As the first alternate candidate, he continues to inform, mobilize, and travel around Italy. We hope that one day he might become the Minister for Energy Transition. In the meantime, you can also listen to his interview on the Voice Over Foundation’s Instagram page.

Giovanni Mori's Voice

“During my journey as an activist, I realized that wind turbines are a tool, but an energy system also responds to an economic system. So, how do we build our energy system? Who does it? These are questions that politics should answer, but today it is completely absent. Therefore, we need to push the best people to run for office”.

Listening to him speak, you get the impression that he is an indefatigable optimist, ironic, extremely pragmatic, and a bit of a troublemaker, as he describes himself. Not only because he is well aware of the devastating effects of the climate crisis, but also because he has been trying in every possible way for years to mobilize, participate, disseminate, imagine, and propose solutions. He started during his thesis, attempting to create a zero-emission CO2 university campus for 15,000 people, and even then, he understood that “trees are not enough because they are not a magical machine that absorbs CO2; the system must change". Giovanni Mori graduated in environmental engineering four days after the largest Fridays For Future demonstration in 2019, which brought thousands of people, especially young people, to the streets, concerned about the health of the planet. Since then, he has never stopped and has continued to sow. He has spread knowledge through the podcasts “Climattina” and “News from Planet Earth", then ran as a candidate on the civic list “Brescia Attiva,” which led to the election of Valentina Gastaldi, 24, one of the youngest municipal councilors in Italy, and participated in the European elections as an independent candidate with Alleanza Verdi e Sinistra.

Why did he choose to run for office? “Because I’m a tech solutions nerd, and while politics says it doesn’t have the tools, I feel the responsibility to be a bit of a troublemaker,” he adds. “When we were protesting from the outside, there was almost no one collecting the requests from the inside. For me, we need a lot of activism but also a lot of politics because, even those who are well-intentioned are not realizing the scale of social, environmental, and economic transformation needed in political institutions".

It’s hard to argue with that. After all, it was precisely the mobilization of people that pushed the European Commission to adopt the European Green Deal and it was the protests that led to the early closure of the Brescia coal plant. And it’s the protests from citizens that say “we don’t want an energy transition imposed from above.” Examples include the struggles against mega biogas plants and large wind farms run by the usual industrial groups.

That’s why it’s crucial to be active, participate, and also return to politics because “technical solutions exist, but we need to prevent those with bad intentions from pushing for gas,” Mori explains. “During my journey as an activist, I realized that wind turbines are a tool, but an energy system also responds to an economic system. So, how do we build our energy system? Who does it? These are questions that politics should answer, but today it is completely absent. Therefore, we need to push the best and most willing people to come together and run for office”.

So what are these solutions?

Energy communities – and here Giovanni Mori proposes a simple idea: “create a sort of environmental civil service for each town, generating employment in rural areas, providing training, and making municipalities energy-independent” – taxing polluters, because studies show that where public policies have been implemented in this way, emissions have been reduced, and environmental damage has been charged to those who caused it, and then stopping infinite consumption because resources are finite. “There is no infinite renewable energy. We need to avoid energy waste, reduce travel, rethink cities, and make them livable with fewer cars.” Furthermore, invest money in the energy transition because there is certainly money available, but “banks and insurance companies have poured billions of euros into the fossil industry, as explained in the report Banking on Climate Chaos", and ensure that the energy transition is managed by competent engineers as well as human scientists.

In short, the solutions exist and they are all collective choices because, as Mori reminds us, “there are no longer individual choices; everything is collective. It was nice to think only of yourself in the ‘80s, but today we need to question the economic model, and politics must lead this epochal change. During COVID-19, they explained in prime time how to wash your hands; why can’t the same happen today by explaining that we need to adopt a plant-based diet?”

So: be active, mobilize, participate, engage in politics, and change the narrative. Perhaps this is the recipe for establishing a new system and hoping to mitigate the damage of a climate crisis caused by the capitalist economic system, the greatest failure of an economy that has externalized everything, considering nature and life forms – soil, air, water, animal and plant beings – as cheap. But to do this, we need, as Giovanni Mori reminds us, to bring together people of good will.

Dive Deeper with Us

If you want to learn more about the climate crisis, denialism, and misinformation strategies employed by oil and gas companies, we recommend checking out the book I bugiardi del clima and the articles that Stella Levantesi has written for our online magazine. In particular, the articles on influencers and gamers and on climate lawsuits. 

Finally, to envision a new world, we suggest the interview “Why we need to Imagine a new world to change It” with Ferdinando Cotugno by Chiara Pedrocchi and Michela Grasso, the article “Why we must start with food and caring for the earth,” and the documentary La Terra mi tiene by Arianna Pagani and Sara Manisera.

Other Useful Resources

To Read:

"Antropocene or capitalocene, Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism" by Jason Moore. 

"The Ministry for the Future" by Kim Stanley Robinson.

"Primavera ambientale. L'ultima rivoluzione per salvare la vita umana sulla Terra" by Ferdinando Cotugno.

See you next time!