Assalto alle Alpi

There is a threat hanging over the Alps in our near future if we continue to draw on old idealizing stereotypes that reduce the mountain to a saving place of pure "beauty", or an amusement park for tourists fleeing the cities. How to imagine their near future? For a few decades now the mountain has been continuously evolving. With the economic boom, the young Alpine residents believed in a better life on the plains, in the factory. Coming down had meant repudiating the ancient "society of toil" by going towards the guaranteed position. Thus in the Alps, with the progressive human absence, an inexorable process of renaturalization has triumphed. Entire valleys, entire villages have been abandoned. There has been a doubling of the wooded area since the post-war period, large carnivores and, en masse, wild animals have returned. And today? The real danger is that everything will remain as it is now, that we will continue to imagine the same tourist development with new ski facilities, forgetting about global warming. May we continue to build concrete, build ski lifts, plan large useless works and major land-consuming events.