They say that when we watch the Chinese Winter Olympics from Wednesday we will see the bluest skies and the best snow-capped mountains ever. They have been working to change the weather in China for years, and the Weather Change Center was officially launched last month. Climate change work, reads the press release, “It is related to the safety of life, the development of production, the well-to-do life and good ecology”. China is not the only country that is trying to use technology to cause or control thunderstorms or to protect itself from storms and droughts (the US and Russia do so too). After all, it is an ancient desire of humanity: but when our ancestors did the rain dance or celebrated the return of the sun, they didn’t really change the weather. Now it is possible. But with what consequences?
Making rain or preventing rain on a certain area affects not only that area but neighboring ones. How? We do not know. But we know that winds and clouds don’t stop on national borders, they don’t need passports to move. If the weather was changed by a country bordering Italy, what would we say? It is an unequal challenge. In fact, in the same days when the inhabitants of poor Ethiopia pray for rain to come to fight the drought, in China they play with the clouds to create the blue sky most suitable for the Olympic Games. In a world where global warming imposes a tariff on everyone, rich countries try to get away with technology by passing the cost to poor ones. But whose climate is it? Do we really have the right to change it? Climate sovereignty will not get us far.