“Necessity is the mother of abilities”: the ancient Romans were firstly codified the deeper meaning of what they called ability and what we now call competence, or, better yet, talent
An article by Francesco Grillo for Il Messaggero
“Necessity is the mother of abilities”: the ancient Romans were firstly codified the deeper meaning of what they called ability and what we now call competence, or, better yet, talent. That is the talent coming from the instinct for survival, the same instinct that carried our species out of the corners of its own history. Many of the innovations that are changing the balance of power among nations and transforming entire industrial sectors (from agriculture to energy, from automobiles to construction) stem from the need to survive an environmental emergency that is making our planet increasingly uninhabitable. And perhaps this is the most pragmatic lens through which Italy can approach the issue of climate change, which is a topic to be addressed in a few weeks in Belém, Brazil, at the COP summit, where all the world’s nations will be represented, except the United States (and Iran).
Robert Solow, one of the greatest economists of the last century, is the father of the theory that still best explains why different countries vary in their ability to increase their wealth. According to Solow, what is decisive is the knowledge that a country (or a company) manages to incorporate into its productive processes. It is therefore surprising that the nations growing the least are the most developed ones, those with the strongest tendency to invest in research. Among the top ten countries in terms of research spending relative to GDP there are all the historically industrialized ones (five of them in the European Union, with the United States in third place). Yet among the twenty fastest-growing economies, only Ireland appears. In reality, the richer part of the world suffers from a paradoxical disadvantage: it is no longer hungry and it struggles to recognize a problem to which it can apply its brilliance. Indeed, Solow himself observed more than thirty years ago that in the United States, “computers were everywhere except in the productivity statistics.” We have changed, with Facebook, the way we make friends and consume information, but we are not solving problems (and some would say we have even created new ones).
The situation, however, is changing rapidly, and it’s being driven by an emergency that is forcing universities, companies, and governments to start measuring their impact again: the necessity to protect cities, rural areas, and industries from a climate crisis that is accelerating. This has been the guiding theme of a global meeting held last week in Venice, which is providing a valuable pool of ideas to support the presidency of the next United Nations Climate Conference.
This is especially true for farmers and high–value-added industries, such as wine production. Rising temperatures can alter the characteristics of the product, lead to earlier harvests, and cause more frequent hailstorms: necessity is transforming agriculture into one of the most technology-intensive sectors. Fields are becoming digital maps, and data enables increasingly precise and localized treatments.
The same is happening in cities (for example, in Emilia-Romagna, but also in Florida and China) which are increasingly exposed to flooding. Venice has become the “oldest of the cities of the future,” having always fought for its right to survive against the sea. It stands as an example of how the need to resist the sea’s destructive entropy has pushed humankind to raise barriers behind which we have built marvelous cities. In the coming decades, the global climate agenda will shift from mitigation to adaptation, in order to find ways for territories to withstand the effects of change. There will be the need to build new generations of roads, to control rivers, and to reinforce dams. The MOSE system that protects the world’s most famous lagoon demonstrates that the future lies in infrastructures capable of responding flexibly to unstable weather conditions.
To conclude, there is also the urgent need to reduce emissions that are literally turning the planet into a greenhouse that is warming at an unprecedented pace. This goal also aligns with Europe’s aim to become less dependent on imported energy, which makes us less secure and less competitive. This is one of the strongest arguments in the much-discussed Draghi Report, which everyone cites but few apply in practice. Italy is among the most vulnerable countries: we import 80% of the energy we consume, even more than Germany (70%) and France (47%). Increasing renewable energy production, leveraging our geographical advantages in regions like Puglia and Sicily, while also opening up to new-generation nuclear power, is essential not only to strengthen Italy’s standing in global climate negotiations, but also to overcome a dependency that makes us, in a sense, less free.
It is up to businesses to propose solutions to the transition challenges. The State, on the other hand, must simply set the direction toward which to orient the development of a sustainable economic model. It must reorganize policies (such as the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy) that currently discourage change. It must remove bureaucratic barriers (for instance, those blocking permits for new renewable energy plants) which delay progress on objectives that should unite everyone (including regional governments that invent incomprehensible forms of environmentalism). Finally, given the scarcity of its own resources, the State must invest precisely in what is necessary to make feasible major private infrastructure projects, which are needed to protect vulnerable territories.
We have spent plenty of words in ideological disputes that divide us on every issue, including climate change, which anyone can now witness through their own daily experience. For years we have been stuck in the imaginary trench war between the economy and nature. In reality, it is farmers, communities, businesses, cities, and families who stand on the front line of a battle that concerns us all. And this is a battle that can only be won by combining vision and pragmatism.
