The Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez could be in line for a battle with the tourist industry.
He announced on Friday that Spain will contribute an additional €45 million to the fight against climate change and offered his country’s support to move forward on this path and address the risk posed by climate change deniers.
Sánchez made this announcement in his speech to the plenary session of the leaders’ meeting convened prior to the COP30 climate summit to be held in the Brazilian city of Belém. The PM began his speech by stating that climate change kills, citing as an example the storm that hit the Valencian Community a year ago, causing 237 deaths.
He added to this the wave of forest fires that affected Spain and other countries last summer.
He stressed that the climate emergency is killing people and that this is not ideology, but science. He said it is a shame that there are still those who deny or downplay its impact, although he acknowledged that ‘no amount of empirical evidence, however overwhelming, is capable of changing the opinion of those who have chosen to blindfold themselves’.
He addressed those who do believe in science and ‘have the moral courage to fight the battle’, those who ‘do not give up or regulate themselves out of political calculation or fear of being devoured by denialist forces.To all of them I want to say that they can count on Spain. And we do so out of moral conviction, because we honour our word, but above all because we believe in the green transition as an engine of growth and transformation,’ he added.
Sánchez said that since he became Prime Minister in 2018, Spain has increased its installed solar and wind energy capacity by 140% and has exponentially multiplied its self-consumption capacity.
He therefore considered that the Spanish economy is one of the fastest growing in the OECD, while demonstrating that it is possible to do so while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
It is a question, he explained, of ‘approaching the climate debate not from a position of fear, but from one of hope, not appealing to sacrifices and renunciations, but to the opportunities offered by the green economy. Not from a defensive position, therefore, but from an offensive one, because we know that our model is better and that it also works better,’ he added.
In this way, he believes that the necessary support can be gained to fight the battle against the enemy represented by the climate emergency, which he said not only kills but also impoverishes. He said that the European Union has lost €44.5 billion annually as a result of this emergency. After urging other leaders not to give up, he said that the Paris Agreement sets the course but that more needs to be done than has been done so far, and he guaranteed Spain’s support for the European Union to continue leading this ambition.
‘Spain is delivering,’ said the Prime Minister, who provided data such as the €1.7 billion allocated last year to international climate finance. He also assured that Spain will continue to work with other countries to tax premium class flights and private jets because he believes it is fair that those who have more and pollute more should pay their fair share.
‘Today, while others are retreating, I want to reaffirm Spain’s commitment to climate multilateralism, with new contributions,’ he said before the COP30 plenary. He immediately announced an additional contribution of €45 million between the Adaptation Fund, the Loss and Damage Response Fund, and the World Meteorological Organisation’s Systematic Observations Financing Facility.
The Prime Minister stressed that climate is much more than a statistic, and if decisive action is not taken to drastically reduce emissions, there is a real risk that, in the next decade, the temperature will rise by more than 2 degrees, with the devastating consequences that this would entail. ‘Let’s avoid this. Time is running out. Let’s act together, rather than failing separately,’ he said.