Climate protection under pressure: Hope for strong ministry wanks!

Climate protection under pressure: Hope for strong ministry wanks!

Österreich, Land - Green scientists and environmentalists vehemently campaign for the further existence of a strong climate and environmental ministry in Austria. In view of the impending breakdown of this ministry by possible coalition partners of the next government, the concern for climate protection will be loud. Leading heads, such as the scientist of 2005, Helga Kromp-Kolb, and the scientist of 2022, Franz Essl, warn that previous progress in climate policy is endangered. Environmental organizations such as Greenpeace see the current political signals that indicate that the environmental policy issues could be pushed into the background in favor of other ministries, as In a worrying review, Greenpeace criticizes that the Ministry of Environment was actually acting as the “appendix” of the Ministry of Agriculture between 2000 and 2019, which had devastating consequences for the environmental balance. During this time, the climate -damaging emissions rose sharply without taking decisive measures to reduce. If the ministry is dissolved again or integrated into another department, Austria could stay far behind its climate goals, says Greenpeace spokesman Sebastian Theissing-Matei. A shining example of how a turn can be achieved for the better shows the study of a Berlin think tank that, on behalf of Greenpeace, examined how much CO2 could be saved if more people work in the home office, such as presseportal.greenpeace.de found out. This study shows that 40 percent of employees who work from home on two days a week could avoid 5.4 million tons of CO2 annually.

With the increase in home office during pandemic, the world of work has changed significantly. Greenpeace calls the federal government to actively promote this trend in order to relieve both the environment and to improve the quality of life of the employees. A clear appeal is directed to the political decision -makers to not only take into account the topics of the climate, nature and the environment in the negotiations, but also to treat them as central priorities.