In the encyclical letter “Laudato si’”the Pope makes a beautiful point about our “common home”, our threatened blue planet, which he calls sister, and tells us: “We grew up thinking that we were its owners and rulers, entitled to plunder it”. With regret, Pope Francis wants us to point out that modern man, despite his culture, has not yet managed to contextualize and interpret well the divine message, then made his own by the whole of humanity, contained in the 1st chapter of Genesis, where God gives man has the ability to dominate other living beings. The pontiff wants to urge us to understand that with this message God did not want to authorize man to destroy nature, but to find solutions. Human intelligence has developed many of them, so that we can live together in peace.
Environment / Relationship between man and nature
Today we continue to behave with the categories of man who lived in a period where nature tangibly conditioned human activities, but now this is no longer the case. It is no longer nature that conditions man, but it is man who is modifying it through his increasingly polluting activities, born after the industrial revolution, which began after the mid-1700s and exploded in the last century. The movements for the protection of greenery still look at each other with a smile on their faces, with disdain. Just as you probably looked at the man trying to defend the last trees on Easter Island. The oceanic island famous for its great civilization disappeared into thin air, due to a probable ecological catastrophe caused by population growth, no longer supported by internal resources.
Acireale and the environment / The importance of the responsibility of those who live in the city
With this brief reasoning, we do not intend to fully address the environmental issue. Much more is needed to influence the decisions of states and their economic-financial powers. But we would like to convey the concept that every man has a precise responsibility which, added to all the others, can make the difference to encourage the development of a more livable environment. For a better environmental awareness, the development of the sense of responsibility of the man who lives in the city seems particularly important, considering that urbanized populations are now the majority of those present on the planet. Let us ask ourselves the problem of how this individual relates to the nature present in the streets and squares, which certainly needs to be protected and improved to improve liveability in urban areas.
Acireale, and the environment / Why build cities around greenery
A Copernican revolution is taking place in the world of urban architecture. Greenery today is seen at the center of building development: we no longer talk about greening neighborhoods, but how to build starting from green spaces. A greener city it is not a luxury, but it is a necessity because trees, in addition to giving us oxygen and removing greenhouse gases, the cause of climate change, have many other advantages. They also ensure biodiversity in the urban environment (the function of ecological corridors with the surrounding green areas is important); improve the physical and mental health of its inhabitants (through areas equipped for recreation, socialization and outdoor leisure); they significantly limit the temperature (contrasts the so-called “heat islands”); they reduce chemical-physical (hydrocarbons and fine dust) and acoustic pollution. Furthermore, greenery helps the economy linked to tourism, improving the aesthetics and attractiveness of the city.
City and Environment / An appeal for a greener Acireale
Therefore, the role that greenery could have in our city of Acireale seems particularly important to us. Think about the meaning they had in the past the Villa Belvedere And the spa parks, today practically abandoned due to the logic that there are “more important problems” to think about. The daily episodes of citizens’ and administrators’ bad relationship with greenery are unfortunately symptomatic of a culture that considers nature, in this case the tree, at best, an object of furniture. A nature that is often humiliated or eliminated if it bothers.
We are pleased to see that moments of relaxation have been multiplying in the city lately discussion on the environmental issue. But collective indignation is not yet coalescing over a clear lack of attention to greenery. How come? Maybe nature is only what is outside the cities? To be idealized in a protected area to be fenced off and protected as a museum of good intentions, to feel at peace with one’s conscience? It is hoped that with these open reflections we will understand that even the green areas that exist in the city are fundamental for our health and for the environment.
Rosario D’Anna
