Why coronavirus must not undermine the fight against climate change
Environment — di Andrea Barolini
From Poland to the airline industry, voices calling for climate efforts to be delayed in the face of the coronavirus crisis are multiplying.
Why coronavirus must not undermine the fight against climate change
From Poland to the airline industry, voices calling for climate efforts to be delayed in the face of the coronavirus crisis are multiplying.
Listen to "07. Coronavirus, quando una pandemia apre il decennio più importante per il clima" on Spreaker.
"Because of the coronavirus epidemic, our economies will find themselves weakened. Companies will not have sufficient funds to invest. And some important projects in the energy sector will be delayed or suspended. These are real problems, which we will soon be called upon to address. As a result, achieving our objectives in the fight against climate change will become difficult." The statement released to the Reuters agency on 25 March by Poland's Environment Minister sounds like a surrender.
🇵🇱 | Poland, which relies heavily on coal-fired power stations, will find it even tougher to achieve the European Union’s climate goals because of the impact of the coronavirus epidemic on the economy and companies.
bit.ly/2WIPkL7
bit.ly/2WIPkL7
Poland: "With coronavirus we cannot achieve our climate targets"
That is to say, from one of the nations that must make the greatest effort to make its productive system sustainable. The European country is still, in fact, heavily dependent on coal, the single most damaging fossil energy source in absolute terms when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions.
Suffice it to consider that Poland is home to roughly half of the 237,000 people who work in the coal sector across Europe. For this reason, pressure has been placed on the Warsaw government for years to do its part in the effort to limit the rise in global mean temperature.
Airline companies call for the suspension of the eco-tax on tickets
The risk is that the coronavirus emergency could now, in the name of the need to revive economies, push the ecological transition into the background — on the conviction that climate protection efforts must be scaled back. This is a mortal risk, one that must be defended against at all costs.
Anti-environmentalist "appeals" are, for that matter, multiplying. Jennifer Janzen, spokesperson for Airlines4Europe, the association representing 16 European airlines, has already called on governments to suspend the introduction of an eco-tax on airline tickets. And, as Reuters itself reported, "some diplomats in Brussels have signalled the need to rethink climate programmes because of the economic earthquake." One of them declared, referring to the Green New Deal: "We simply don't have enough money to do everything."
The ecological transition is a unique opportunity to revive economies
The reality, however, is that by investing in the ecological transition it would be possible to generate millions of new jobs. In this way, the coronavirus crisis itself could represent the opportunity to turn decisively towards a sustainable future. It is in this spirit that the European Union's decision to suspend the budgetary constraints imposed by the "Stability Pact" should, for example, be exploited — freeing up resources for so-called "counter-cyclical" policies, that is, ones capable of countering the recessionary push.
The world is acting over the coronavirus pandemic. Why hasn't it done the same for climate change?
cnn.com/2020/03/18/wor…
cnn.com/2020/03/18/wor…
And it is in this direction that the 750 billion euros of support on the way — in the form of purchases of public and corporate bonds — from the European Central Bank should be channelled. Otherwise, the world will save itself from coronavirus, but will continue to hurtle towards a wall called the climate crisis.