Il negazionismo climatico e il ritardo nelle politiche di mitigazione

Climate change "negationist" and the delay in mitigation policy - The great majority of the scientific community believe that there is a strong probability that the Earth, in the next decades and centuries, will have to face climate chan- ges, due to human activities, dangerous for people and the for the Earth ecosystems. Without serious and immediate interventions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, there will be damages still difficult to estimate in the proper range. Despite that, during last years many voices raised to deny climate changes alarms. Even if these positions are proposed as necessary and worthy in the name of the doubt and the skepticism of the science, they can be better defined as "climate denial", that is an attitude of obstinate, unreasonable and bad-documented skepticism. The analysis of the evolution and the foundations of the topics used, as well as the organization of the denialists positions in an historical and scientific context, allows to value how these thesis, determined and dignified by the necessity of the doubt and the scepticism as foundations of the scientific process, could constrain the implementation of the more and more urgent mitigation policies of climate changes, as well as to be an obstacle to the creation of a common consent, which constitutes the preliminary remark. JEL classifications: Q54, Q58

Keywords: Climate change, environmental policy

Stefano Caserini, Il negazionismo climatico e il ritardo nelle politiche di mitigazione in "ECONOMIA DELLE FONTI DI ENERGIA E DELL’AMBIENTE" 2/2009, pp 47-62, DOI: 10.3280/EFE2009-002003