“Climate change is here and we are living the consequences. It isn’t some remote prospect, it is the new normal,” Paola Pino d’Astore, an expert at the Italian Society of Environmental Geology (SIGEA), told Reuters.
Experts say Italy’s geography makes it particularly vulnerable to climate disasters: its varied geology make it prone to floods and landslides, while rapidly warming seas either side make it vulnerable to increasingly powerful storms, amid rising temperatures.
The frontlines of the climate crisis have hitherto been in the global south, leading to the oft-repeated refrain that those least responsible for the climate crisis are facing the worst effects. But for Italy now, and probably soon the rest of Europe, the enemy is at the gates.
Last August, a weather station near Syracuse on the southern island of Sicily recorded 48.8C, which is thought to be the highest temperature ever measured in Europe. While the world fights a losing battle to keep the increase in global average temperatures below 1.5C, in Italy average temperatures over the past 10 years are already 2.1C higher than in pre-industrial times.
Coldiretti, a national farmers’ group, says the number of extreme weather events recorded last summer, including tornadoes, giant hail stones and lightning strikes, was five times the number registered a decade ago. And, like in many parts of the world already feeling the impacts of climate breakdown, it is farmers suffering the most: last year’s severe drought caused crop yields to fall by up to 45%.