Saturday, August 25, 2012

Let's pray for rain!


The sign says "Let's pray for rain" and is taped to the door of the entrance of the sanctuary of Madonna del Sasso (Our Lady of the Rock), not far from Florence, Italy.

The drought in Italy is so bad that we can only pray for some rain, which doesn't seem to be coming, anyway. As an example of how bad it is, I had never seen figs drying on their branch, but this year it is happening. Look:



More pictures of the drought in the countryside can be found at this link.

Now, why this terrible (I'd say "Biblic") drought? Well, it is an ongoing phenomenon, clearly related to climate change. Look at this image from NOAA (source).


Look at the Mediterranean Region: it is predicted to be the most affected by drought in the whole world. So, what we are seeing today is just a prelude of something much worse that could develop in the coming years and decades.

Now we are reduced to pray for rain and hope that the Good Lord will perform a miracle for us. But we cannot say we hadn't been warned.




Who

Ugo Bardi is a member of the Club of Rome, faculty member of the University of Florence, and the author of "Extracted" (Chelsea Green 2014), "The Seneca Effect" (Springer 2017), and Before the Collapse (Springer 2019)