In a video interview yesterday with EIR, Italian climate expert Franco Battaglia, Professor of Physical Chemistry at the Modena University and a co-initiator of the manifesto “There Is No Climate Emergency” endorsed by more than 1,000 scientists internationally, speaks about energy, climate and the war in Ukraine. The transcript will appear in a future issue of EIR, and the video on various LaRouche websites.
Battaglia says: “Obviously, this war has brought to the surface how stupid and false was the climate emergency: Because the idea of climate emergency is this. We humans used fossil fuels, coal, oil, gas, which when we burn, then emit CO2, carbon dioxide, and carbon dioxide is supposedly the cause of irreversible climate change. So the European Union aims at getting zero CO2 emissions by 2050, thirty years from now.
“All of a sudden, we discovered, once the war started, that we might have problems getting gas, oil and coal from Russia. Russia is a very important supplier for Europe in these. Now, all of a sudden they realized that they do have a problem: when it seems that this dream (which is a nightmare) of achieving zero CO2 emissions could come true, and is helped by the fact that Mr. Putin could cut off all exports of fossil fuels, now we are panicking. Why? Because we cannot reduce CO2 emissions. This attempt to reduce CO2 emissions is not something from modern policy: It’s a policy that has been going on for 20 years. There was a Kyoto Protocol in 1997, which aimed at reducing the CO2 emission worldwide by 6% by 2012. And there was the 20by20 package of the European Union, according to which the CO2 emissions should be reduced by 20% by 2020, which means two years ago. Now, 20% from 6%, with respect to 1990 emissions.
