President Sergio Mattarella and his Greek counterpart Katerina Sakellaropoulou have jointly expressed their “strong concern” over the climate emergency. Meanwhile, a survey showed over a third of Italians believe there is excessive worry over climate change.
According to a statement issued by the Quirinale press office today, both President Mattarella and Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou are concerned over the climate change which is affecting the Mediterranean.
“The President of Greece Katerina Sakellaropoulou and President Sergio Mattarella have had a telephone conversation in which they expressed strong concern over the climate emergency,” said the statement.
“Sakellaropoulou stressed the need for a joint initiative by Southern European countries to tackle climate risks in the Mediterranean,” it continued.
“Mattarella responded positively to the proposal. Greece and Italy can create a joint front to raise awareness among the EU, other Mediterranean countries and the international community in order to act more quickly and effectively,” concluded the statement.
Greece has been battling devastating wildfires driven by intense heat on the islands of Evia, Corfu and Rhodes.
Italy is in the grips of a combination of wildfires in the southern regions of Sicily and Puglia fuelled by intense heat and strong southerly winds and extreme bad weather with thunderstorms, gales and hail in the north.
The situation improved in the northern regions on Wednesday.
Biggest European hailstone ever
Europe’s biggest ever hailstone fell in northern Italy on Monday. Storms caused death and destruction across swathes of the north, the European Severe Storms Laboratory (ESSL) said yesterday.
The hailstone which fell on Azzano Decimo near Pordenone was 19cm in diameter. It beat the previous hailstone record, also in northern Italy, of 16cm set on July 19th at Carmignano di Brenta near Venice.
The world record is held by a hailstone measuring 20.3 cm that fell in South Dakota in 2010.
Over 4,000 fire brigade interventions
The Italian fire brigade announced today it had made over 4,000 interventions for bad weather in the last three days. Around half of them were for the southern wildfires, with just over 2,000 for northern storms. In total, at least seven people died this week as a result of extreme weather.
“These have been overworked days for the fire teams, busy with forest fires in the South and bad weather in the North,” it said.
Over the last three days (figure updated at 9 a.m. today) they have carried out 1,938 interventions against forest fires: 710 in Sicily, 407 in Calabria, 281 in Sardinia and 540 in Puglia.
Six thousand personnel and almost 1,500 vehicles were mobilised, including 14 Canadairs and 2 Erickson S64 helicopters.
For the bad weather in Lombardy, there were 2,077 interventions and some 2,900 personnel and 500 vehicles were deployed.
Survey shows over a third of Italians think climate emergency is over-hyped
Some 34.7% of Italians believe there is excessive alarm about climate change. Furthermore, 25.5% say the floods which devastated Emilia Romagna and parts of Tuscany and Le Marche in May are the most effective response to claims of progressive desertification. This according to the Ital Communications-Censis report ‘Disinformation and fake news in Italy’ released on Wednesday.
The report also showed that 16.2% of the overall population denies climate change exists. The percentage rises to 18.3% among the elderly and to 18.2% among the less educated.
More generally, 76.5% of Italians believe fake news is becoming increasingly sophisticated and difficult to identify. 20.2% believe they do not have the skills to recognise it. Also, 61.1% believe they are only partly equipped, according to the report.
However, 29.7% of the population believe fake news doesn’t exist but rather that true information is passed off as fake in an act of deliberate censorship by outlets.
