Clmate Change is a Human(ities) affair!

Climate change is a reality: in spite of sceptics, a very little amount really, the effects are in front of everyone's eyes. The causes of the change are also well known, as the implications for our everyday life: violent and sudden precipitations, floods are all events considered to be related to climate change.

Media and governments repeat that we must reduce carbon emissions, even that IPCC reports draw a future of disasters and decline for humankind. Sure, I can buy a low emissions car (as I've done yet), but what about my neighbour? He would like to do the same? That is what happens in the different States or regions around the world: that is an effort we have to do together if we want to act effectively.

Waiting for it, we can only to cope with the change. Climate change, in fact, is a GLOBAL PROBLEM WITH LOCAL ISSUES. In this perspective, local communities are in the first line in that battle. From this point of view, we easily can recognize that is not the first time that humans have to challenge it. Natural climate changes has in fact occurred many times during the history of humankind. Generally, these changes have been low, gradual; often instead they have been sudden, catastrophic with their effects. The destiny of ancient cultures has been different too, collapsing or successfully coping with it.

How the study of the past can be useful to plan the future? Because climate change is a HUMAN AFFAIR: we are not only responsible of the change itself, as science has well demonstrated, but we are also able to find the right strategies to cope with changes, both in an adapting way, and finding the resources to be resilient in face of the changes; because we live in a human-environmental system, where society is closely linked to the nature. In this way, climate change is a HUMANITIES AFFAIR, a multidisciplinary collaborative field of study between the "hard sciences" and anthropology, geography, history and archaeology.

This is the aim of this research: studying the past to find the relation between society and environment and to investigate the critical relation between them. I'll try to report it as a storytelling, to drive you in this fascinating and challenging journey.