We would now seem to have entered a phase of sure interest towards the green economy, of innovative startups that deal with eco-sustainable agriculture, of discoveries for the reduction of atmospheric pollution, of seas and soils, of a mobility with a low carbon footprint ... but is that right? 

Despite the European Commission chaired by Ursula von der Leyen, it has traced a clear and unambiguous path on a development model more compatible with the needs of the earth and, despite being on the other side of the ocean, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, is rowing in the opposite direction by even withdrawing his country from the Paris climate agreement, the business world is holding the helm straight in deciding how and where to invest the money available.

In fact, beyond the state proclamations and people's opinion movements, money moves in the interest of profit which, at times, can be crossed with the interests of politics and opinion public and sometimes not.

It cannot be said that social business exists, as money is invested today with ever shorter time horizons than in years, decades or the last century. Thanks to the computerization of economic systems, investors bet on activities that are hoped to have very high returns in a very short time.

An example can be seen by observing the performance of some technological stocks and services related to the web, such as Google, Apple, Amazon, Tesla, just to name a few, which have increased their value during the period of the explosion of Covid in a completely surprising way, in an extremely limited space of time, with double-digit percentage growth values.

This is unlikely to happen in a traditional economy, and it is increasingly common to see how world capitals turn to businesses with exponential growth in short periods.

How is it possible to attract investments in green projects that must change or solve the production, consumption or mobility anomalies that afflict our planet, whose projects take years or decades to implement?

Any investor is interested in bringing drinking water to some metropolises, such as Mumbai, where the return on investment would be assured but in the face of the construction of a water network whose times would obviously be long?

It would seem not, in fact every day hundreds of trucks bring water to the city, emitting tons of CO2, but there is no capital to modernize the water network and reduce air pollution.

This is just one example of the paradox of finance, which affects the maintenance of inefficient and polluting systems, despite having the resources and means to solve environmental problems.

Automatic translation. We apologize for any inaccuracies. Original article in Italian.