When I grow up I will be a street cleaner – La Bottega del Barbieri

There are 29 million abandoned and aging oil and gas wells worldwide. In Italy there are at least 700. Many leak methane, a greenhouse gas that is almost thirty times more powerful than carbon dioxide in trapping heat in the atmosphere. The wounds of the world need healing in many worlds.

Of Alessandro Ghebreigziabiher

Photo by Zbynek Burival on Unsplash

Let’s imagine a group of children. If we listened, we would simply hear about hopes and dreams. Which more often than not, due to the weight of age, we would agree that they are naive at best. Especially when it comes to individual aspirations. Among the most popular, I will be an astronaut AndI will become a writer , I am President of the Republic AndI’m an established rock star , I’m just famous AndI with similar practicality,so rich .

It would certainly make a noise if one of them loudly exclaimed: “When I grow up I’ll be a street cleaner.” As it happens, that’s exactly what Matthew De La Rocha She said
as a child to his family in Bolivia and the reason was simple: in his eyes, anything but naive, the street cleaner was the only one he saw doing something about pollution. Subsequently, Mateo and his family moved to the United States, precisely to the city of Cary, North Carolina and today, having reached his last year of high school, he has decided to give substance to the alleged naivety of the time. After involving two of his fellow students in the venture, Lila Gisondi and Sebastian Ng, he dedicated himself to an initiative that was nothing short of praiseworthy, if not urgent: closing an abandoned oil well in Ohio, managing to raise as much as 10,000 dollars.According to the Environmental Protection Agency, there are 3.9 million abandoned and aging oil and gas wells in the United States. Many of them leak methane, a greenhouse gas that is nearly 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere over a hundred-year period, and even more potent over shorter periods of time. A global problem

not just the USA. According to a relationship Reuters in the world, wells defined as orphans and therefore extremely harmful and dangerousthere are approximately 29 million . Only under the water surface of the Gulf of Mexico does it exist they calculate

at least 27,000. In addition to the gas emissions that affect the greenhouse effect, there is also the serious aspect of pollution, with the release of carcinogenic substances into the aquifers.What then can we say aboutItaly ? Well, data dating back to 2022, they tell us that out of 1,298 wells that reach deep gas or oil deposits, more than half are closed, i.e.752

. There are many reasons, perhaps because the deposit is exhausted, or because the possible profit did not balance the costs, because production required further investments that the company in charge was not able to cover, or because the rules for exploitation had been violated . In any casethe consequences and risks are particularly high to the point of talking about a real natural disaster, as in case

of the disposal of production water in a well decommissioned in 1988 in Molise. Obviously, instead of worrying about the greenhouse effect and pollution, we do pause

more on how we can further profit from these enormous holes in the heart of our host planet.

So, as far as our country is concerned, I can’t help but imagine again. Closing my eyes and imagining a group of children again, hoping not only that some of them hope to be street cleaners when they grow up and repair the damage done by the unfortunate generations that preceded them. Because if I really have to dream too, I’d like none of them to be forced to do it, that’s it.