I arrived at Milan’s Garibaldi Train Station on a torrid July evening. It was 20.00 CET and the temperature was still a suffocating 34ºC. The city’s taxi drivers were on strike, so it took me much longer than I had expected to arrive at my hotel. When I did, I was sweating profusely. It was somehow an appropriate introduction to the story I was covering. Faced with what has been described as the most severe drought in 70 years, in early July the Italian government declared a state of emergency in five northern regions. Two weeks later, there had been no significant rainfall and the situation h…