The President of the Government, Pedro Sanchezhas drawn this Tuesday a clear link between the climate change and the disaster caused by DANA two weeks ago in the province of Valencia during his speech in the Plenary Session of political leaders on the second day of the Climate Summit, COP 29 which started this Monday in Baku, Azerbaijan, where he stated that the warming of the atmosphere has contributed to the deaths of “more than 220” people.
Without hesitation and without waiting, Sánchez sent a very clear message as soon as he began his speech. “I have come here to talk about a terrible truth that Science has been pointing out for some time, that climate change kills. Last year alone, more than 300,000 people and just contributed to the deaths of more than 220 of my compatriots in Spain,” he said about a list of deaths that is not yet definitive.
As he told an audience full of presidents, prime ministers, kings and princes of the UN countries, the DANA in the province of Valencia is “the biggest natural disaster in our history and, according to the first investigations, would have been less likely or intense without the effect of climate change“.
“At this moment, only one thing is as important as helping in a crisis: preventing it from happening again and preventing natural disasters from multiplying,” Sánchez said at COP29, in a brief speech that was filled with references to the DANA of valence as evidence of the existence of climate change and its effects and also that arguments centered on the fact that the climate fight will harm the economy and “the moderate and working classes”, which are precisely the ones who have most “suffered” in Valencia. “This is what has happened in Valencia, where there are still missing people and homes covered in mud.”
Sánchez’s participation this Tuesday in COP29 occurs in the midst of the internal crisis over DANA and, at the international level, about the meeting, its “general atmosphere”, as a person present in Baku said this Monday, doubts float about whether the United States will continue to fight climate change when Donald Trump returns to the presidency in January and what effects this will have around the world.
Regarding these doubts, the Spanish president has launched a call to continue moving forward and has shown Spain as an example that emissions and resource consumption can be reduced – 40% in the last year, he said – and be “the fastest growing OECD economy.
“At this crucial moment for Humanity, we see many governments hesitate, slow down when they need to move faster and deny the evidence, turn around and walk backwards,” said Sánchez, who has insisted that fighting against Climate change does not mean “giving up abundance or returning to the Stone Age.”
“We have to innovate, decarbonize, use new materials and promote adapted cities and more resilient infrastructures,” said the president, who has also rejected the idea that the formula is “returning to the combustion engine” or “deregulation just so that the rich continue being richer”-
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