Sergio Staino and Chicco Testa. A "strange couple" that, in hindsight, has many points in common. "First of all both - Testa writes - we are part of those who" I have been registered with the PCI "».

To unite them there is the irreverent tone and the never be able to emancipate from the "passionaccia" for politics.

In a tasty comparison with pencil and words, put all the limits of the widespread culture of the No, to show how they do not help at all to grow. By dint of "No Ogm", "No Triv", "No Reforms" and by denying, we are in fact a country stuck in the swamp of immobility and we risk delivering ourselves to the troublemakers, demagogues, dispensers of post-truth.

To exorcise all this, the authors give us a bonfire of the obscenities of which every day we are all victims, often unaware. "The book is born - writes Sergio Staino - from the desire to confront myself with a personality that I feel at the same time very close and very far from me. We have different ways of interpreting reality, even formally - he with the elzeviro, I with the pencil - but we are united by irony and love of doubt. So read it with fun, knowing that sometimes I'm right, other times he and, probably, sometimes neither. "

Nature is an imposing machine that produces life and death. It gives birth and makes you die. Everything: from the very small to the very big. From this machine we have a lot to learn and much to understand. But it is neither right, neither good nor beautiful. As no machine can be in itself. Nature does not care about us humans. Go ahead and that's it. When it is used instead to justify behaviors, judgments, mistakes are produced, sometimes tragedies. Political choices, lifestyles are influenced, public decisions are modified, religious beliefs are modified. Above all, a pseudo-value system is produced, which would like to deduce from the natural laws criteria of reference and compasses for our moral and social existence.

In the past this has produced immense tragedies justifying, in the name of nature, inequality, discrimination, censorship and dogmatism.

Understanding the nature and the mechanisms that regulate its functioning also means having an immense wealth of knowledge available. The history of the human species is characterized, thanks to this knowledge, by the continuous efforts to overcome the limits imposed by nature. A long journey from the natural to the artificial, thanks to our intelligence and above all to the technologies we have. To achieve these results we have had to overcome the restrictions that nature has forced all other living species. We fought "against nature". But at the same time we acted "according to nature". Because we have learned more and more efficiently to survive, to grow and to multiply.

There is no paradise from which we left and to return. Nor is it a natural paradise.

The responsibility for our choices lies entirely on our shoulders.

Much has changed since 1987, when Italy gave up nuclear energy.

It is time to review that choice, if we really want to protect the environment and look to the future of our energy policies. World energy consumption continues to grow driven by three billion new consumers, especially in Asia's economic miracle. Renewable sources are destined to remain minority for many decades. Fossil fuels, and above all coal, dominate the energy market. Our economies are increasingly vulnerable to the price of oil. Finally we must all face the new challenge of global warming, with the greenhouse effect and its disastrous consequences. Instead of fighting against nuclear energy, it is worth trying to solve the problems to gain the benefits, first of all the complete absence of emissions into the atmosphere. In the world, many members of the environmental movement are already convinced of this: nuclear energy can help the environment and free us from the tyranny of coal and oil. There is no doubt that between leaving your child inside a nuclear power plant and giving him a motorbike, the second choice involves infinitely greater risks. Yet we give scooters to our children and take to the streets against nuclear power plants. Is the fear of nuclear energy justified, more than twenty years from Chernobyl? Or would the energy and environmental challenge of this century convince us to use it to face the ever-increasing demand for energy and to reduce its impact on the environment? The rest of the world has already made its own choice in favor of nuclear energy. It would be entirely reasonable for Italy to follow this path. But can a country like ours, where urban waste becomes social and technological emergency, face such a complex challenge? In reality, the Italian refusal of nuclear exposes the defects of an entire ruling class that cultivates illusions, avoids alternatives and continues to dream of a world that does not exist. An absent leadership that continues to preach well and scratch badly, convincing itself of what should be done only at the price of a continuous, irremediable delay.

Nuclear energy knows a new "renaissance" all over the world. The traditional countries already owned by technology have added economic powers such as China, India and Brazil. But above all, the support given by Barack Obama to the recovery of the nuclear industry, which the American President considers part of the "green economy", caused a sensation. In Italy too the debate has reignited and in the coming months the path through which the sites of the new nuclear plants will be located will have to be decided.

Chicco Testa, founder of Legambiente and promoter of the 1987 Anti-nuclear Referendum, rewrites the reasons for that choice and motivates, in a transparent way, because he has changed his mind and why he considers it necessary for Italy to resume a nuclear program. It does so by debunking the "false myths" of renewables, discussing the numbers of Italian energy, environmental problems and the reasons why many antinuclear leaders around the world have become supporters of this form of energy.

But above all it does so by exposing the paradoxes of common feeling, influenced by an emotional and superficial information that leads him to misunderstand the scope and nature of the risks, and not to understand for example that "between parking your child inside of a nuclear power plant and give him a scooter, the sencoda thing involves infinitely higher risks, yet we give scooters to our children and we go down to the streets against nuclear power plants ".

The entire renewable energy sector is suffering today in Italy. The government has drastically scrapped the incentives granted to this technology or even canceled them. The sector has stopped and many companies are in crisis. The future of renewables appears seriously mortgaged. But is it the fault of the Monti government, which took these measures? Our answer is no. The blame is instead a system of subsidies to the solar out of control that has triggered a real greed and sent out of control the electricity costs consumed by millions of users. We think that it was a bad intervention of so-called "industrial policy", a collapse to the pressure of different interest groups, which used huge resources in a totally inefficient and unjust way. The brutal synthesis is that the middle has eaten the end. Not only this mode of support for photovoltaics has not helped its technological advancement, nor the development of its supply chain.

In 1996 ENEL is still a large monopoly, wholly owned by the state and with over 100 thousand employees. There is no free energy market in Europe. The new management just appointed by the Prodi government, Chicco Testa Chairman and Franco Tatò Chief Executive Officer, faces a very complex challenge: transforming ENEL into a company ready to compete in the market and support the approach of liberalization in the 'power. a task to be carried out in the context of the great effort required by the country to complete the consolidation of public accounts and guarantee the essential entry of Italy into monetary union. This volume tells the great transformation of ENEL and its relationship with the country in the six crucial years between 1996 and spring 2002, accompanying it with a valuable collection of data and information on the energy sector often unknown to the general public. Testa explains the challenges won, the bets still open and the unknowns for the future. Without reticence on the six years of government of the center and on the most burning issues of the political debate.