\n<\/p>\n
Spain\u2019s prime minister, Pedro S\u00e1nchez, has announced a 10-point plan to prepare the country for the climate emergency, warning: \u201cIf we don\u2019t want to bequeath our children a Spain that\u2019s grey from fire and flames, or a Spain that\u2019s brown from floods, then we need a Spain that\u2019s greener.\u201d<\/p>\n
S\u00e1nchez said August\u2019s heatwave-fuelled wildfires \u2013 which killed four people, burned through an area six times the size of Ibiza and required \u201cthe biggest human and technical deployment\u201d ever seen in Spain \u2013 showed that immediate action must be taken to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis.<\/p>\n
He said waiting any longer would be dangerous and expensive, and he criticised those who deny the realities of global heating in Spain. Over the past five years, he said, the climate emergency had caused more than 20,000 deaths and cost the public purse \u20ac32bn (\u00a328bn) in material losses.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to mobilise as a society against climate change, which is a common enemy that lies beyond ideologies,\u201d he said. \u201cClimate change kills. It kills. And that\u2019s why we have to be aware of everything it represents in terms of insecurity and in terms of the risks it poses to our lives.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe climate change denial that\u2019s coming from an important part [of society] \u2013 and which is growing as a result of the lies spread on social networks by some members of our political class \u2013 is as incomprehensible as it is worrying.\u201d<\/p>\n
He proposed a series of initiatives including a state civil protection agency to coordinate crisis responses, a network of climate refuges across the country and a rethink of forest management and land use. Only by acting now, he said, could the country hope to avert similar disasters or reduce their impacts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest opportunity we have right now is to avoid this tragedy \u2013 and to do that, we need to do as a US president once advised when he said that the moment to fix your roof is when the sun\u2019s shining and not when it\u2019s raining,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he was right because these sixth-generation fires that have burned through more than 300,000 hectares in our country aren\u2019t put out in summer; they\u2019re put out in winter and in autumn. They\u2019re put out by working all year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other measures in the socialist-led government\u2019s \u201cstate pact to address the climate emergency\u201d include funds to prepare for, and rebuild after, climate-related disasters, improvements to firefighting capacity, a plan to increase water resilience in the face of floods and droughts, and initiatives to fight rural depopulation and thus help keep the land clear of combustible material.<\/p>\n
S\u00e1nchez said farming would also play an important role in fighting the climate crisis, pointing to the benefits of extensive agriculture, careful grazing and efficient irrigation. The final two measures are promoting a \u201ccivic culture of prevention and reaction\u201d and accelerating the green transition.<\/p>\n
The plan will be approved in cabinet on Tuesday and put out for public consultation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Spain\u2019s prime minister, Pedro S\u00e1nchez, has announced a 10-point plan to prepare the country for the climate emergency, warning: \u201cIf we don\u2019t want to bequeath our children a Spain that\u2019s grey from fire and flames, or a Spain that\u2019s brown from floods, then we need a Spain that\u2019s greener.\u201d S\u00e1nchez said August\u2019s heatwave-fuelled wildfires \u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[270,186,187,11356,3114,3164,1436,714,656,185,272],"class_list":{"0":"post-18575","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-change","9":"tag-climate","10":"tag-crisis","11":"tag-deniers","12":"tag-kills","13":"tag-launch","14":"tag-plan","15":"tag-spain","16":"tag-spanish","17":"tag-tackle","18":"tag-tells"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}