At 51, she says it herself, Isabella Morlini has had plenty of time to see the mountain change. His specialty is trail and mountain half-marathon. Summer and winter, it connects the kilometers of positive elevations. Three times world champion in snowshoe racing, she has spent her life on the summits, at least her weekends, since during the week she is an economics professor at the University of Modena, specializing in statistics. Statistics that all tell him the same thing: if nothing is done to stop climate change, Italy, its inhabitants and its economy will go straight into the wall. So she decided to get involved, to challenge, to testify.
She became an ambassador for the Caravane des Glaciers, a group of scientists who monitor the evolution of the mountain on the ground. And the conclusions it reports are frightening: the Forni glacier, for example, has retreated 40 meters since January, 400 meters in ten years, the Marmolada collapsed in July killing 11 people and the Stelvio is no longer accessible. . Too dangerous. “What is happeningexplains Isabella Morlini to La Repubblica, it is that, for lack of snow, the glaciers no longer reform, and that in addition the particles of pollution accumulate on them, the surface becomes black and absorbs more light, therefore more heat and melts by creating crevasses impassable.”
She tells of the pebbles that have replaced the snow, the ground that has become unstable, crumbly, sometimes deadly. To go further than the testimony, she has just signed a petition with a dozen scientists to challenge Italian politicians in the middle of the campaign for the legislative elections. In a letter published by the daily La Repubblicaall the candidates for the September 25 elections are called upon to place climate change at the top of their priorities.
The text collected nearly 200,000 signatures in a few days. It’s encouraging, but what is even more so, according to her, is that we know the solutions: “We know that the first thing to do is to reduce CO2 emissions, we know that we have to adapt our behavior”. Because a melting glacier means fewer water reserves and therefore penalized agriculture, stunted harvests and soaring prices. A melting glacier doesn’t just concern world snowshoe champions, it concerns all of us.