Sustainability

Toward change to protect the environment and future generations

The future of the planet, the environment, and sustainability are increasingly at the center of the goals and challenges of the year that has just begun as well. After environmental protection was enshrined in our Constitution in 2022, it is no coincidence that President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella chose to address Italians in his traditional end-of-year address by also addressing these now no longer procrastinable issues.

Recalling that the Republic "is all of us, no one excluded," Mattarella said that it is necessary "to be inside our time, not in the past, with intelligence and passion." And to do so "we must change the gaze with which we interpret reality" and "learn to read the present with the eyes of tomorrow." A tomorrow that must be planned with courage, without turning our backs on progress, technology, science. According to the Head of State, "To think of rejecting change, of renouncing modernity is not only a mistake: it is also an illusion. Change must be guided, innovation must be interpreted to improve our living conditions, but it cannot be removed."

"Securing the planet and therefore our future, the future of humanity, means," the president said on Dec. 31, "first and foremost addressing the issue of energy transition in a concrete manner. Energy is what allows our societies to live and progress. The complex work it takes to move from traditional sources, which are polluting and harmful to health and the environment, to renewable energy is the new frontier of economic systems."

And he did not fail to emphasize that on these issues-particularly on the establishment of a new ecological culture-in the front row are the younger generations, protagonists of the planet's tomorrow. "Let us look at tomorrow through the eyes of young people. Let us look at their faces, let us collect their hopes. Let us make them our own. Let us ensure that the future of the younger generations is not just what is left of the present but is the fruit of an exercise of conscience on our part." A warning to reflect on but above all to act on.