Preservation of the Common Good

Abstract

Today we live in a society that is certainly more advanced at a social and economic level than in the last century, even though it certainly cannot be said that the planet that hosts us is treated in such a way as to seek the right balance between our activities and the health of the Earth.  Indeed, with the passage of time the problems that afflict the environment have weighed more and more on the planet which, by now, no longer seems capable of fully metabolizing the imbalances that we ourselves create. In particular, in the last fifty years there has been a marked increase in average temperatures on a global level due to the large quantities of CO₂ emitted into the atmosphere, which has corresponded to an evident decrease in the forests and green spaces that allowed, through photosynthesis, the transformation of carbon dioxide into oxygen. The increase in CO? is precisely the cause of the famous phenomenon that goes under the name of "greenhouse effect", which causes a progressive increase in heat and which is precisely the cause of the loss of biodiversity, the degradation of natural habitats, the formation and widening of the ozone hole and desertification.

The situation has been aggravated by an excessive exploitation of the soil and, in particular of the subsoil, rich in substances which over time have become strategic for the world economy, such as hydrocarbons. All this is so true to the point that the countries that own the deposits carry out a sort of blackmail on others, and more and more often they threaten to cut off supplies and thus keep the fate of those countries lacking such resources in check if the countries in debt do not comply with their wishes. It is sufficient to think back only for a moment to the absurd requests made by Russia towards Finland, Sweden and, more generally, towards all Western countries, on the sidelines of the current war of aggression unleashed against Ukraine! For years the world community has shown itself to be guilty of being short-sighted in the face of the problem of indiscriminate environmental exploitation, admiring only the face of the coin that is simpler to see, that is to say, rapid but equally selfish and wicked development. In fact, the intensive use of our planet earth has caused a great depletion of oil and metal fields, which need millions of years to regenerate. As if what has been said so far were not enough, the picture, already very complicated in itself, is joined by the onset of some serious diseases (pandemics) caused by the growing and almost uncontrollable overpopulation. It seems a useless exercise to repeat that every day we need to reflect more on the environmental issue, making every effort to find alternative solutions, in order to weigh less on the earth system. We must seek and find a way to reactivate those rebalancing mechanisms of the system itself that we, with our wrong doing, have almost stopped. Our own survival and that of future generations are at stake. The development that we want to encourage is therefore also based on a profound rethinking of the priorities that are the basis of our lives, first of all culture, which must be absolutely within the reach of every living being. Only in this way can we think of having future generations perfectly formed for the challenges that await them.