Zepp-LaRouche Tells ‘Italy on New Silk Road’ Conference, We Need a Renaissance of Scientific Thinking

March 15, 2018 (EIRNS)—At the conference “Italy on the New Silk Road,” co-hosted by MoviSol and the Lombardy Region of Italy and held in Milan March 13, Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche addressed a hotly discussed issue in Italy, the Turin-Lyon high-speed rail (TAV) infrastructure, which one part of Italy’s government wants to block. Moderator Claudio Celani, speaking to Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche, joked: “You praised the Italian government, but I will criticize it,” and asked for her views on the Turin-Lyon TAV, given that this important infrastructure, with a 57 km base tunnel under the Alps, is an essential part of the Lisbon-Kiev Corridor 5 and would integrate with the Belt and Road Initiative.

Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche pointed out that German media are having schadenfreude over the Italian government’s postponing a decision on the TAV in order to avoid a crisis, and she invited instead for a look at the larger picture. At the beginning of the BRI, Central Asian countries debated whether one should build the east-west or the north-south connections, and she insisted that with the progress of the BRI, both ways would be built and the entire continent would be integrated. And that is now what is happening, she said.

“This is exactly how to look at the Lyon-Turin tunnel question, because the lack of infrastructure in Europe is gigantic,” with a backlog of 1.7 trillion euros alone in Germany. If Europe wants to be in any manner at a level similar to China, where all major cities are connected by really fast trains and the so-called “slow maglev” systems are being built in urban areas, “we have to integrate our infrastructure in Europe and modernize it, and completely revamp the way of thinking we had so far.”

In this context, she exposed the lack of scientific basis behind the green ideology that is affecting not only parts of Italy, but all of Europe. “On Friday in 60 nations we will have schoolchildren go on strike [to protest for climate change], and this is not based on science. It is a suicide movement. Many of these young children have no basis to understand what is the source of climate change. They say it is not worth to living anymore; [and asking] why should I learn [anything] if the world ends in 12 years?

“We need a Renaissance of scientific thinking and the question of infrastructure is absolutely the precondition for any industrial development.”