Climate emergency, Fabio Deotto: “Our world has already changed”

This article is published in issue 30-31 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until August 3, 2021

In May 2019 the Guardian made public the new guidelines of his articles: for example, it was said, the expression “climate change” and stereotyped images such as “polar bears hovering on an ice raft” will no longer be used, because they shift attention to the future , while the emergency is in progress. Fabio Deotto, journalist and writer, with his The other world (Bompiani) starts from this white bear, and tells how he has already moved in search of food in Belushya Guba, a village in Arctic Russia, terrorizing the inhabitants.

Before and after the lockdown, Deotto took a few planes – feeling guilty, but thinking it was worth it – to go and see the “postcard” places with his own eyes: the erosion of the coasts in the Maldives, the water invading Venice and New Orleans, the lack of snow in Santa Claus village in Finland. “Let’s look away. It is no longer just the white bear or the panda, exotic, symbolic emergencies. It has been for at least ten years that we have seen the effects of the climate every day and we have not reacted ».

Why is it so difficult to deal with climate change?
«Our brain works in such a way as to store information according to simple mental schemes so as not to have to continually update it. While the data on the climate are uneven in space, because they concern different places more aggressively than others, and over time, so there is no regular progression ».
Greta Thunberg used the metaphor of the burning roof, she says it’s like we’re about to be run over from a bus but we are not afraid of it. Because?
“Because to prove it, experts say that a threat must have characteristics, be sudden, current, personal, for example. The climate emergency, on the other hand, is like a bus that reaches us from afar but we see that it proceeds slowly, so it is not dangerous. Let’s try the so-called “climate anxiety” instead ».
What is that?
«A set of unconscious manifestations, at the level of depression, agitation, which we do not refer to the climate. If it’s warmer and I’m feeling a little anxious, I don’t connect the two. Likewise, if the bus arrives slow, I am alert but I do not associate it with danger. Furthermore, the “illusion of control” is triggered in us, whereby we look at what others are doing. If the group doesn’t react, we don’t react either. “
Not even with the pandemic, sudden and personal?
“It sure hit everyone at the same time, and we won’t forget it. But the problem is always the same: the dots do not connect. Few have connected that the pandemic is also caused by the man-nature imbalance, with the former consuming soil and biodiversity ”.
The collapse of a building in Miami, the most serious since the Twin Towers in the United States, for theEconomist it is a consequence of the sinking of the ground.
«Perfect example: we talked about an engineering, structural problem, which perhaps also exists, and only afterwards, of the city that is sinking into the ocean. If there is a flood in Germany, people on Tg talk about clogged manholes. Another reason was also sought for Covid, the zero animal, the Chinese conspiracy. The truth is that there are a thousand variables, reality is complex and easy answers cannot be given, but the climate emergency always matters: because we already live on another planet than in the past ».
There is a lot of talk about personal responsibility for sustainability, then she explains that 71% of global emissions are attributable to 100 large emitters, so every personal action is virtuous, but it doesn’t have all this impact. What to do?
“Yes, we must implement good practices but do not delude ourselves that it will be enough. For at least forty years we have been subjected to a rhetoric of individual responsibility that has shifted attention to the individual. But there is a contradiction: on the one hand we are told that we must limit consumption, on the other we live in a world where well-being is measured by money. So if we have to have growing GDP to be healthy, we have to consume. Therefore, it is also necessary for entities, states, large groups and companies to take their responsibilities ”.

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