Defending Firms or Defending Environment?

This question clearly expresses the way through which the present Italian government is carrying on its personal struggle (together with consistent sectors of the Italian Industry Association) in order to obtain dispensations from EU about the Kyoto pollution limits. On the base of this false blackmail, it is clear enough by now that this administration is trying to support its electoral base (big industries and big corporations) at any cost. It is a particularly shameful thing that this goal is presently achieved even encouraging fiscal evasion: but supporting certain economic interests even destroying our future is a real foolish idea. The incapability to implement development models adequate for XXI century clearly demonstrates how these politicians, apparently engaged in new techologies (above all in communication and TV!), are on the contrary linked to development models typical of XVIII and XIX centuries made of gears, smoking chimneys and looms. Instead of thinking in terms of innovation, in Italy these individuals are still blocked at the idea of "cutting costs" of any kind. It is necesary that italian firms, with their associations, and the government begin to think over forms of innovative competition which can be based also on environment protection instead of trying to find any possible short-cut to reduce production costs.

Those present cuts to research and education can be included within this obtuse strategy for which at the end, being unable to generate innovation, we are forced pollute if we want that our productive system can be alive!

The axiom "profit and growth at any cost" is no longer sustainable. It is not possible to find any pretext, the last one linked to the present financial crisis, to elude the dramatic problem of pollution whose costs are regularly shifted to the next generations and to developing countries.

These facts highlight therefore the myopia of larger parts of our productive and political system. We should rather support those development forms capable to generate incomes instead of profits in an environmental, economical and social sustainable way. This is not an environmental but rather an ethic issue, it is not a productive issue but a central theme of economic democracy.

Polluting firms must be penalized (thanks to real controls and heavy sanctions which at present completely lack) and provide a real support to innovative firms (instead of financing "friends", mafia and political supporters) above all young entrepreneurs more sensitive to innovation. In Italy we urgently need a National Plan for Energy adequate not only to energy needs but also to environmental needs.

We all are called to give our contribution thorugh our everyday choices, lifestyles and also renouncing to some no-use options: do not wait for the politicians' interventions because, as these facts clearly show, in Italy today (both right and left wing) we have a political class (which we have choosen democratically) rather incompetent...