To save itself, Europe must respect climate and biodiversity protection goals. We can, however, in this election campaign, debate the tools to achieve them, the scientific community encourages us.

THE ROLE OF THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY IS IN FACT PRECISELY THAT OF OFFERING EUROPEAN CITIZENS THE WIDEST POSSIBLE RANGE OF INSTRUMENTS TO TACKLE THE CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS, FROM WHICH WE CAN CHOOSE THOSE CLOSEST TO OUR VISION OF THE WORLD: BUT THERE MUST BE AN AGREEMENT BETWEEN ALL THE EUROPEAN POLITICAL FAMILIES ON THE RESPECT OF SCIENTIFICALLY BASED GOALS ON CLIMATE AND BIODIVERSITY, OR THE CONSEQUENCES WOULD BE SO DIRE AS TO MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR US TO ACHIEVE ANY VISION OF THE WORLD – THE MEETING ANNOUNCED WITH AN OPEN LETTER FROM THE EUROPEAN SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY FOR THE SIGNING OF THIS AGREEMENT WAS IN VENICE, ON MAY 3RD, AND LED TO THE SIGNING OF THE AGREEMENT IN ROME ON JUNE 5TH ! THERE WERE ALMOST THE SAME TRANSVERSALISM THAT IN ITALY LED ALL THE POLITICAL FORCES TO SIGN AN AGREEMENT FOR THE CONSTITUTION OF A SCIENTIFIC CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT COUNCIL, NOW BEING EXAMINED BY OUR CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES – HERE IS OUR STORY:

On the eve of the 2018 general election, 18 of Italy’s leading climate change and environmental scientists formed the scientific committee ‘Science on the Ballot.’ Data in hand, the scientists warned that only by saving the environmental context, which was already becoming increasingly precarious, could the best solutions be found to the other problems that were at the center of the election campaign: jobs, immigration, security, and taxes. The committee offered a series of concrete proposals and with an open letter invited the political parties to a public meeting: indeed, in the 2018 programs of either center left, center right, MoVimento 5 Stelle, Liberi e Uguali, as well as other lists, environment was present, beyond what might appear in the election campaign.
From the public meeting, which on Sunday, February 18, 2018, saw the presence of all political forces, came the proposal, by the Committee and following the example of what happened in the United Kingdom on the eve of the 2015 elections, to sign a cross-party pre-election agreement: four specific points of action to save our country’s environment. The agreement was signed on Thursday, March 1, 2018, at the Foreign Press Association in Rome by all political forces, with the unfortunate exception of MoVimento 5 Stelle and Forza Italia.
The Committee then proposed to all political forces to proceed with the implementation of the agreement by organizing, together with the Vice-Presidency of the Chamber of Deputies, in the person of Hon. Fabio Rampelli, a conference on March 12, 2019, entitled “A climate for collaboration – Climate change in Italy, and grave risks and great opportunities that accompany it, require an important joint work by all political forces,” in which the proposal of a political/scientific working group called “1.5” was launched, that is, with the goal of containing the temperature increase in the degree and a half. Unfortunately, Lega and Movimento 5 Stelle did not participate in the meeting.
After the great success of the first “Global Strike for Future” on March 15, 2019, the committee wrote an open letter of support and a proposal for collaboration to the students striking for climate, which was shared by many fellow scientists.
In the face of the Covid-19 emergency, the Committee then stepped in to remind people that solving the environmental and climate crisis thankfully requires commitments far less onerous than those required by the pandemic.
When, at the beginning of 2021, a government of national unity – from which only Fratelli d’Italia stayed out – came into being to deal with the vaccination campaign and the management of the PNRR, the Committee, involving other groups of scientists, presented Prime Minister Draghi with a proposal for an organic role for science to help the country not only with the pandemic: widespread training, a research boost, the establishment of a National Scientific Council to help deal with the environmental emergency.
On the eve of the early political elections in 2022, the Committee reminded in an open letter that – in order to realise any vision of the future – we must be united on the climate, launching the ‘Choose Our Future’ campaign aimed at citizens, businesses and political forces. These have all signed an agreement to set up a Climate and Environment Scientific Council, and a draft law, written by an authoritative group of jurists who supported the Committee, has been presented to the Environment Commission of the Chamber of Deputies.
Today, on the eve of decisive elections for the future of Europe and of the world, the Committee has involved the European scientific community to ask the continent’s political families to sign a pre-electoral agreement that distinguishes between goals on climate and biodiversity, which are irrenounceable, and tools, which should be discussed. The agreement was signed by 6 of the 7 European political families.