Viaggio a Oblivia

The stories, experiences and thoughts of an exceptional traveller, record holder and one of the most followed environmental advocates, sheds light on the mental “traps” that make us helpless and inconsistent in the face of the drift of the environment in which we live.

The evidence of climate change, the tons of plastic dumped in the rivers and in the oceans, the waste that plagues our cities, and the land that becomes desert-like is not enough. In the face of environmental crises, we are tempted to minimize the emergency and give up on doing our part, neglecting our impact. Why?
Maybe because, whether we want it or not, we all live in Oblivia. In this imaginary “bubble”, everyone lives “happily insensitive” and a thousand miles away from the behaviours we should adopt to protect the planet and ourselves.

Why do we experience a seemingly irreconcilable tension between thoughts, dispositions and actions, when what is at stake is precisely our living environment? What cognitive and behavioral biases populate Oblivia, causing our ecological demands to fail? Can we overcome them? Will we be able to play this vital game for all of us human beings with more coherence and effectiveness?
Alex Bellini asked himself this in this book in which he tackles one of his most arduous and exciting explorations ever, that of our ecological mind.