Russia invades Ukraine, and the U.S. and the EU show solidarity and concrete help to the victims of the attack. Linear. Israel invades what remains of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. The United States and the European Union don’t show solidarity and concrete help to the victims but to those who bomb civilian buildings, hospitals and tent camps. To neutral eyes, something does not add up.
It all adds up, actually. Everything is consistent with the self-fabricated narrative that sees those most involved in the last century’s major conflicts portraying themselves as models of human rights-respecting democracies—the world’s guiding light.
Climate policies follow the same script. After exploiting coal and oil at will for nearly two hundred years, the U.S. and Europe are now cloaking themselves in green and lecturing the rest of the world about the urgency of halting China and India’s extensive use of fossil fuels. They would endanger the entire planet and thwart the virtuous policies of the U.S. and Europe, who have been decentralizing production to China for years to take advantage of the favourable conditions of underpaid labour and reduced energy costs.
Now that the realization is dawning that the energy transition is less straightforward and cost-effective than it seemed, there are already warnings of policy changes to avoid finding themselves at a disadvantage compared to China, which already leads the commodity market in the energy transition.
The biggest polluters are the ones who propose to prescribe the cure to solve the problems of climate and the health of the entire planet. No patient would seek treatment from those who poisoned him. With climate policies, we are doing just that. The difference with wars is that, here, censorship and propaganda are worth zero: extreme events, when they hit, hit everyone. There are no cover-ups, nor are there any populations that are morally superior to extreme weather. Last summer was the hottest on record in Europe; again in 2024, the deadliest floods hit Afghanistan and Pakistan (1084 deaths), Spain (231) and Brazil (181), not to mention the Enga landslide (Papua New Guinea) with an estimated 2,000 victims in the Tulipana village. These perennial climate and energy policies lectures have blood on their hands.
Gianni Serra
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By: ONE Editor
Italian professional journalist. ONE Editor in Chief and Sotacarbo Director of Communications and International Relations.
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