Climate or Weapons. Europe’s Two Faces of the Apocalypse

Roberta de Monticelli
Former Chair of Philosophy of Personhood, San Raffaele University, Milan;
1989-2005 Chair of Modern and contemporary Philosophy, University of Geneva;
Chief Editor of “Philosophy and Mind”

The first Nature Restoration Law. Recondition. Repair. Regeneration. Reintegration. Re-creation. The sigh of relief after the European Parliament approved with a thin majority the Nature Restoration Act, tends to become a wind reviving the letters of the words, making them reach theological heights. “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth”. Do not laugh at it yet, this moment of imaginary relief already stretches out into the broad sweep of apocatastasis, i.e. the restoration of the creation in all its glory: the palingenesis that will follow the ecpirosis, the universal conflagration that will have reduced the world to ashes. Don’t say yet that this display of outdated words is further proof that the law passed is the product of the “green chic”, out of time and reality, according to the Italian Minister for Business and Made in Italy Adolfo Urso. Only good for the idleness of the intellectual elites and for the wealthy’s mansions. It has its own reasons, however, as does the roar of jubilation with which the outcome of the vote – 336 votes in favor (300 against and 13 abstentions) – was greeted in the European Parliament.

Two readings: a political and an idealistic one

Even this euphoria can be read in two ways, a higher one and a more concrete one. The latter generally prevails in the comments: jubilance due to a temporary win of Ursula’s majority over the PPE leader Manfred Weber’s attempt at wrecking it, by reconfiguring a new majority together with Meloni’s conservatives (ECR) and the sovereignists (ID, Salvini, Le Pen, the far right). The stakes are the 2024 European elections. The rescue has to be credited to part of the liberals (without the support of the Italian ‘third pole’, Renzi) and to 15 dissidents from the Popular Party, and will be repaid by revising the law and watering it down. The EU Green Deal is not safe yet. If I have blown the Apocalypse trumpets – a rhetorical artifice called amplificatio –, it is to suggest, perhaps with a smile, another reading. A higher one, I mean closer to the principles out of which the EU was born. Indeed, not just because Altiero Spinelli already dealt with the problem in 1972 (Una sfida per l’Europa: lo sviluppo industriale e il problema ecologico, [A Challenge for Europe...] in Il Mulino, May-June 1972 [in Italian]), but because “the Restoration law is… the most important law conceived so far by the EU with regard to its environmental politics. It is a beacon for the whole world, to such an extent that Canada and the US are trying to emulate it”. These are Roberto Danovaro’s words, interviewed by Cristina Nadotti for Repubblica; he is Professor of maritime biology, selected to supervise the part of the Law falling in his field of competence (project Redress), acknowledging an Italian excellence in academic research. The law aims at “redressing” 80% of the European habitats that have been devastated.  Whatever sociologists and political scientists might say, there aren’t just the “guts” (fear and hatred) that inflate the scum in politics, but also the sterility of hearts, that is the lack of credible ideals, which demotivates those who could resist, those who do not vote anymore.

But there isn’t a stronger force than that of ideas that appear good, in human affairs: history’s tragedy is almost all concentrated in the persuasive power with which demagogues – and today also world leaders – brandish the names of good things to wage war and bring death. However, can a law aiming to restitute, restore and repair – listen to its words – be used for a grim and tragic abuse of power? No. And for this precise reason the law had to open a breach in its ideal shield made of ethics and care. Here is the true – potential – reduction to nothing: the clause allowing exemptions for “exceptional…effects” with particular regard to defense and energy infrastructures (Anna Maria Merlo, Il Manifesto, July 13).