It’s not easy going green

Nearly two years after the Holy See announced that it would become the world’s first “carbon neutral” sovereign state (by planting trees in a Hungarian national park to offset Vatican City’s CO2 emissions and energy use), that initiative has yet to bear fruit. The Italian edition of Wired reports this month that not a single […]

Nearly two years after the Holy See announced that it would become the world’s first “carbon neutral” sovereign state (by planting trees in a Hungarian national park to offset Vatican City’s CO2 emissions and energy use), that initiative has yet to bear fruit.

The Italian edition of Wired reports this month that not a single tree has been planted, and that the “Vatican’s climate forest” remains a “barren land of mud and brushwood.”

But the same issue of the magazine highlights the Vatican’s ambitious plans, using photovoltaic panels, solar cooling and biomass technology, to reduce the impact of its greenhouse emissions to zero within five years. (Both articles in Italian.)


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