“Our beloved ecosystems are being destroyed by crazy human behavior”
Climate experts and analysts assured that the detachment of a glacier in Italy “is the fault of human beings” for causing global warming and warned that the situation “may worsen” if there are no rapid measures.
“The tragedy in the Alps is the result of man-made global warming, our beloved ecosystems are being destroyed by the direct consequence of crazy human behavior“said economist Jeffrey Sachs, a member of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and a consultant to the United Nations, in statements to the Repubblica newspaper.
This Sunday, at least six deaths were recorded due to the detachment of part of a glacier in the Italian Alps, on the mountain known as La Marmolada, while another 20 people are sought by rescuers in the rescue operations that began early today.
For Sachs, these events show that “Within a very few years, the limits of the Paris agreement will be largely exceeded and well in advance”in reference to the goals that almost all the countries of the world signed in 2015 to try to mitigate global warming.
In a similar vein, the geologist and television host Mario Tozzi stated that “there is only one culprit, we, homo sapiens.”
“We woke up the sleeping bear. It is only man who has accelerated these changes in climate with consequences like this. And waking up to nature can lead to catastrophes like the one on Sundaywhich is just one example of what will happen in the coming years,” added Tozzi, quoted by the newspaper The stamp.
The place where a part of the glacier broke off is near Punta Roca, on the path that is usually used to reach the top, in the middle of the tourist season.
Regarding the detachment, the researcher Renato Colucci, from the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council (CNR-ISP), told Télam that “at the origin of the tragedy of La Marmolada, “we can remember that for weeks the temperatures in the heights of the Alps are well above normal values, while last winter there was little snow, which hardly protects the glacial basins anymore.”
For Colucci, “the extreme heat of the last few days has probably produced a large amount of liquid water from the melting of the glaciers, so we are in the worst conditions for this type of movement,” in the midst of a series of several days without rain and with temperatures of more than 40 degrees in the main Italian cities.
Along similar lines, analyst Pierfrancesco De Robertis considered that human beings “are paying for errors that have been going on for several decades, and the problem is that not everyone thinks the same or is willing to take on this problem.”
“It is a very complex problem, even if we all agreed it would not be easy, and the more we continue without solutions, the situation worsens. There are States that are big polluters and do not react, because they do not want to or because they cannot,” added De Robertis in statements to the Rai chain.
In statements collected daily I will runthe mountaineer Reinhold Messner added that “with global warming the glaciers are getting thinner and, when they fall, they collapse to pieces like skyscrapers”.
“Unfortunately, the mountains are also affected by pollution from big cities”said Messner, the first person in the world to climb the 14 highest peaks on Earth.
The La Marmolada glacier is considered the largest in the Dolomites, in the eastern Alps; it is located in the province of Trento and gives birth to the Avisio river and is above the Fedaia lake.
According to a report by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) released on March 1, the melting of ice and snow is one of the ten main threats caused by global warming, which will disrupt ecosystems and threaten some infrastructure .
According to the IPCC, the glaciers of the Scandinavian countries, Central Europe and the Caucasus could lose between 60 and 80% of their mass by the end of the century.
