When I was little and still lived in the Capital of Italialand, summer was a season (yes, seasons still existed, and the intermediate ones too, madam!) highly yearned for by yours truly. Partly because it was the time of year when school ended, which meant holidays, partly because it was the period my birthday would fall in, and partly because with the heat everything seemed more acceptable, even problems.
I should preface this by saying I am more of a cold-weather person than a hot-weather one (so much so that I moved to a country quite a bit further North than my native one), and I have always maintained that when it is cold you can always wrap up warm, but when it is hot, once you are down to your skin, there is nothing left but the air conditioning – for those who have it and can afford it, of course. It goes without saying that those who use it do not want peace, as a “dear” former Head of Government of ours said not so long ago. But as we know, warmongers are lurking everywhere, especially in the shadow of scorching walls.
That said, returning to the hot summers of times past, I remember some truly boiling ones. The last one that was sensational in my pre-expat memories dates back to 2003. At the time I was working for a press agency and, having to do the daily press reviews, I had to get up even before dawn, at 4 AM to be precise. But that year I slept even less than usual because at night I had 30 degrees inside the house, not being one of the lucky owners of air conditioning. I tossed and turned in bed, went to have a nice shower and lay back down soaking wet, but to no avail! After three minutes I was dry again and started sweating all over again. So I swore to myself that that would be the last year without an air conditioner, and indeed the following year, in the coolness of the room, I managed to sleep the sleep of the just.
Once upon a time, many years ago, to “refresh” the hot Roman summers (in Rome the summer has always been terrible and muggy, so much so that all the noble families during the summer period would flee to the villas they had built in the “Castelli”. Near the city, but up in the hills) there was the so-called “ponentino” for the common folk, a gentle breeze that blew from the sea in the afternoon and gave a modicum of relief to those gasping for air in the city. Then, gradually, as time went by, thanks to rampant concrete development and who knows what else, this afternoon manna from heaven disappeared, leaving room only for the heat of the Sun from above, and that of the asphalt from below. Asphalt retains about 30 per cent more heat than normal ground, thus becoming a veritable oven after hours and hours of solar rays. Therefore, when they say on the telly that the temperature was so many degrees, but the perceived one was so many more, I would say it is a massive load of rubbish. Also because what they do not say is that the reference temperatures are taken outside the city and at an altitude of about 100 metres. To crown it all, they are cutting down trees all over Italy, seemingly without any logic (a separate article could be written about this).
But let us leave the polemics aside, because heat is heat. Everywhere, not just in Italialand. The only difference is that in other places the heat alternates with decidedly cooler periods, when truly violent storms do not downright strike (like the one in Paris a few days ago), with rain, hail (as big as tennis balls) and gale-force winds.
Ah, madam… there are no intermediate seasons anymore! It is “climate change”! Ah, the glaciers are retreating, the desert is advancing, the rivers are drying up… and I have grown old too… There are no certainties left these days!
As I was saying above, I have grown old, but, perhaps, I have not lost my marbles. I remember in fact some interviews and conferences from several years ago where General Fabio Mini spoke clearly about climate modification by military circles for war purposes. A project that started a long time ago, in the mid-Nineties of the last century.
I can already hear the do-gooders squawking: “Do you have proof? Are you some sort of scieeentiiisttt?”. The answer obviously is: no! But I still have a brain and, unlike many others, I still try to use it. I do not need to be an expert in a specific scientific field to connect the logical dots of various pieces of information that over the years have leaked out, albeit in dribs and drabs, and understand that alongside natural environmental changes, technology can undoubtedly contribute to extreme atmospheric and telluric phenomena. Even more so now that, so it seems, AI is increasingly ruling the roost in the civilian world, let alone the military one.
The world is governed from emergency to emergency, whether the protagonist is a virus, the climate, or war. The important thing is to always keep us on our toes, to justify a continuous tight control over the lives of us all. And the net is drawing ever closer. 2030 is only 4 and a half years away. Give or take a month… So? So nothing. Happy sweating to everyone and enjoy the absolute hottest summer ever!
