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T W he e d G g r e

11 May 2021

The fight to protect Italian cities from climate change offers the opportunity to place climate policy at the centre of the nation’s political imagination and present the climate change fight not as a futuristic project but as the revival of an idea familiar to Italian culture and identity: the utopia of the ideal city. [...] The foundation of the Swedish welfare state in the 1930s, as well as the development of the social insurance systems in the 1960s and 1970s, led to great individual rights as a result. [...] There is a real divide between the Sweden Democrats, the Moderates and the Christian Democrats on the one hand – and the rest of the parties in parliament, as the former do not acknowledge the importance of climate change, nor do they prioritise the issue with actual policies. [...] The choice of the word Wende for the energy transition was useful at the time – appealing as it did to die Wende, the German term for the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of the country. [...] The media linked the event to climate change (rising sea levels and tropical winds moving north), but commentators and politicians suggested that the Mose22 would solve all the problems of the city soon.23 This wishful thinking draws on the idea that it is just Venice that has to fear climate change due to the fragility and unique environment of the lagoon.
Pages
88
Published in
United Kingdom

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