Planting Trees in the Apennines?

"It is snowing. The Duce looks out of the window and is glad that it is snowing." So wrote Italy's Foreign Minister, Benito Mussolini's son-in-law, Count Galeazzo Ciano, on Christmas Eve 1940.  "This snow and cold are very good," he recorded Mussolini as saying. "One of the principal reasons I have desired the reforestation of the Apennines has been to make Italy colder and more snowy."*

Who knew Mussolini was an early prophet in the war against climate change? He might have done better to focus his energies there, rather than in his futile fight to create an Italian Mediterranean and African Empire!

Seriously, I have no idea how many trees actually got planted in the Apennines in the Duce's (inevitably short-term) reforestation program. The Apennines (Appennini), a mountain range extending the length of the Italian peninsula, do include some of the best preserved forests in Europe. Recent European climate patterns, however, suggest that perhaps he should have done more of it! Neither Italy nor the world needed Mussolini's monstrous empire nor his self-destructive alliance with Germany, but both Italy and the world would benefit from more trees, more snow, more cold. Consider the recent heat waves and wildfires in Europe, making that traditionally temperate continent suddenly more like perennially fire-threatened and increasingly drought-stricken California. Not necessarily quite the apocalypse - yet. But an ominous sign nonetheless, one which we have neglected - and keep neglecting - to our peril!

*The Ciano Diaries 1939-1943, ed. Hugh Gibson (Doubleday, 1945, Simon Publications 2001).

Photo: Monte Cimone, the highest mountain of the northern Apennines (Wikipedia)