In programmatic speech with whom he asked the Senate for confidence, Prime Minister Mario Draghi explained what the priorities and ambitions of his government will be, insisting at length and in several passages on environmental protection and on what he called “ecological transition” , which in his government will have a dedicated minister. The attention and weight of environmental issues in the speech exceeded expectations and precedents, and included a rather effective and commented sentence:
We want to leave a good planet, not just a good currency.
In his speech Draghi closely linked the environmental issue to economic development, arguing that the growth models used up to now will have to change, as they have contributed to the climate crisis. He then gave a fairly clear warning to Italian companies:
The government will have to protect workers, all workers, but it would be a mistake to protect all economic activities equally. Some will have to change, even radically. And the choice of which activities to protect and which to accompany in the change is the difficult task that economic policy will have to face in the coming months.
According to Draghi, the approach to be applied in economic policy is in some respects the same one with which we must face climate change: by facilitating innovation and investments by companies that create demand for new sustainable activities, many of which were born during the pandemic.
Climate change, like the pandemic, penalizes some production sectors without there being an expansion in other sectors that can compensate. We must therefore be the ones to ensure this expansion and we must do it now.
The economic policy response to climate change and the pandemic will have to be a combination of structural policies that facilitate innovation, financial policies that facilitate the access of businesses capable of growing to capital and credit, and expansive monetary and fiscal policies that facilitate investment and create demand for the new sustainable businesses that have been created.
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