Entrevista a MIGUEL TORRES MACZASSEK SOBRE LA VITICULTURA REGENERATIVA
El cambio climático es un hecho, a pesar de que el Sr. Donald Trump lo niegue, y ello comporta una serie de cambios en muchos aspectos del día a día, aunque no lo parezca. En el campo de la viticultura, las afectaciones son diversas y para combatir esos cambios y las posibles consecuencias negativas que puede comportar, se han de tomar decisiones importantes. Familia Torres se compromete con la viticultura regenerativa para, en el futuro, tener un impacto positivo en el clima.
SW.: It is obvious that we are facing a potentially huge problem given the climate change that is occurring. We can see it in the weather conditions: much higher temperatures in summer, shorter spring and autumn seasons, harsher winters... How did we reach this point?
Temperatures have been evolving throughout the history of our planet. There have been periods of high temperatures and glaciations, but these changes have been attributed to natural phenomena and have occurred over thousands of years. The major difference is that today, just over 200 years since the start of the industrial era, we have reached a global average temperature rise of 1.3ºC due to greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere – mainly as a consequence of industrialisation and the use of fossil fuels. While this temperature variation might sound insignificant, it has serious ramifications and makes adverse weather events more extreme and more frequent, such as periods of drought and so on. All of this has a profound impact on agriculture, and particularly the viticultural sector since grapevines are exceptionally sensitive. The sector has to adapt to compensate for the earlier harvests brought on by rising temperatures and to combat other phenomena such as spring frosts, hail, drought, etc., which put crops and wine quality at risk. The threat climate change poses to the wine industry is much more severe than the devastation caused by the Phylloxera plague towards the end of the 19th century.
SW.: We cannot let future generations suffer the consequences of our malpractice and leave it to them to make changes to try and curb climate change. What do we need to do?
Decarbonise the economy urgently. This means reducing CO2 emissions and sequestering atmospheric CO2 to prevent the temperature rise reaching 2ºC by the end of the century – experts maintain this would be the point of no return. Hitting the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement is crucial. This agreement reaffirms the obligations of all countries to take the necessary measures to hold the rise in global average temperature below this 2ºC. The new US President Joe Biden has also committed to the agreement. To achieve this, fossil fuels
