Climate protection under pressure: hope for a strong ministry is fading!

Climate protection under pressure: hope for a strong ministry is fading!

Green scientists and environmentalists are vehemently committed to the continued existence of a strong climate and environment ministry in Austria. Given the threat of this ministry being broken up by possible coalition partners of the next government, concerns about climate protection are growing. Leading minds such as 2005 Scientist of the Year Helga Kromp-Kolb and 2022 Scientist of the Year Franz Essl warn that progress made so far in climate policy is at risk. Environmental organizations such as Greenpeace are particularly critical of the current political signals that indicate that environmental policy issues could be pushed into the background in favor of other ministries, such as today.at reported.

In a worrying review, Greenpeace criticizes the fact that the Ministry of the Environment effectively acted as an “appendage” of the Ministry of Agriculture between 2000 and 2019, which had devastating consequences for the environmental balance. During this time, climate-damaging emissions rose sharply without any decisive measures being taken to reduce them. If the ministry is dissolved again or integrated into another department, Austria could fall far short of its climate goals, according to Greenpeace spokesman Sebastian Theissing-Matei. A shining example of how a change for the better can be achieved is shown by the study by a Berlin think tank, which, on behalf of Greenpeace, examined how much CO2 could be saved if more people worked from home pressportal.greenpeace.de found out. This study shows that by having 40 percent of workers work from home two days a week, 5.4 million tons of CO2 could be avoided annually.

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