They want us all to become 'forest families'

The story of the 'forest family', as they are now known, is a real paradox because they are being punished precisely for choosing a lifestyle that the European Union and environmental organisations – from the WWF downwards – would like to impose on all citizens. An exaggeration? No, that's exactly how it is.

We don't know the full story of Nathan Trevallion and Catherine Birmingham, a couple with three young children who have been living in the Palmoli area of Abruzzo (central Italy) for several years. However, we do know that they follow a neo-rural lifestyle, apparently shared with other families in the area: a small stone house somewhat furnished, with a toilet in an outhouse, no running water, electricity only from solar panels, and food largely produced by themselves (vegetable garden and animals). They only use their car for essential journeys. Whatever the reason – fighting climate change, saving the planet, hatred of modernity, or whatever – this is the way they have chosen to live. But this lifestyle also led the Juvenile Court of L'Aquila to suspend their parental authority and take their three children away.

This brings us back to the paradox mentioned at the beginning, which revolves around the concept of the 'ecological footprint', by which the sustainability of our lifestyle has been judged for about the last thirty years. At least according to this regime of environmentalist tyranny, which is forcing us to make irrational choices about everything from housing and cars to energy and consumption. How many times have we been made to feel guilty for our excessive ecological footprint, which steals resources from the world's poor as well as from future generations?

Do you remember Greta Thunberg standing in front of an audience of Italian politicians and intellectuals and accusing them of 'stealing our future'? Or when she burst into tears of anger at the UN, saying, 'You have stolen my dreams and my childhood'? They tell us it's all the fault of our ecological footprint, which devours resources that the Earth is unable to regenerate.

But what exactly is the ecological footprint? It is a scientific unit of measurement that calculates our impact on the global ecosystem. It is defined as 'the area of land and water required to produce a population's consumed resources and dispose of its waste, taking into account prevailing technology'. This is the official definition given by its inventors, academics Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees, who translated their research into formulas in the book Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth, published in 1996 and immediately adopted by WWF as a theoretical foundation for ecological theory. The two academics also created the Global Footprint Network, which continues to explore this topic and, let's face it, indoctrinate.

To return to the point of this article, let's visit the Global Footprint Network website to calculate our ecological footprint. There are several sites that offer this service, but let's use the original to understand the real purpose of this propaganda. This involves answering questions about eating habits, housing, energy use, and mobility. I think I represent the average Italian living in an urban environment: a family living in an 80-square-metre flat with a car mainly used for family needs and a varied diet with food purchased mainly at the supermarket. The result, for those who believe in such things, is terrifying: 'If everyone lived like you, humanity would need 4.2 Earths'. More specifically, I would have used up my allotted resources last 29 March, my personal 'Earth Overshoot Day'.

You may already be familiar with it: The media highlights Earth Overshoot Day every year to remind us that, from that day until 31 December, the entire world population is living in ecological deficit. This is obviously due to industrialised countries. In 2025, Overshoot Day fell on 24 July, underlining the severity of the ecological crisis.

Some might think that my terrible ecological footprint is due to my own wasteful habits, which are not necessarily attributable to everyone in my situation. In reality, however, Italy's overall ecological footprint is even worse at 4.5.

So, how can we return to a state of balance with the environment? Simply by adopting the same lifestyle as the 'family in the woods'. Try calculating your ecological footprint to see for yourself.

This is the lifestyle that the environmentalist elite would like to impose on us, and this is the direction in which the European Green Deal, the Paris Climate Agreement, and the rules of sustainable development are taking us. All this is happening thanks to the creation of a non-existent climate emergency, and the passing off of pseudoscientific theories as inescapable truths — no one has the courage to question them.

If this is the goal, why are they picking on the 'family in the woods', who are doing exactly what they want us all to do? Shouldn't they be presented as a model? In recent years, the mainstream press has often told us about people who have left society behind and taken refuge in nature. These people don't have children in the hope of saving the planet.

Perhaps it is precisely the children who are the problem for the family in the woods. Then there's the fact that Nathan and Catherine clashed with another powerful ideology: that of the omnipresent state. This is a state that does not tolerate anything escaping its control — a state that is the true 'master' and educator of children.

This is a clash between two ideologies, both of which contribute to our oppression. We need to be aware of this.