Climate change has social and economic impacts that aggravate gender inequality and to which the Government is not responding with the urgency and ambition that the declared climate emergency requires, therefore, the State should be condemned for “climate inaction.” This is how the experts from Ecologists in Action, Greenpeace and Oxfam International have defended it this Wednesday before the Supreme Court in the “climate trial against the State.”
Termination of duties
The litigation has been opened after the presentation of a joint lawsuit by the three NGOs in 2021 that consider that the Government is abandoning its functions in the face of climate change. The experts have been heard this Wednesday by the High Court to which they have exposed the scientific reports on climate change.
The experts summoned – despite the fact that the State Lawyers had opposed their appearance – were the professor of Environmental Engineering and PhD in Chemical Sciences, a member of the Intergovernmental Group of Experts on Climate Change (IPCC), José María Baldasano, and the PhD in Agricultural Engineering and professor at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Margarita Ruiz Ramos.
Speaking to the media after defending his reports to the Supreme Court, Baldasano explained that the report presented by environmental organizations along with the lawsuit has been ratified on the emission reduction targets and their consequent climate impacts in Spain.
Climate change is here
The scientist, winner of an IPCC diploma for his contribution to the organism being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, has assured that the current climate change is not something that will come in future years, but that it is already here. Thus, he considers that the time to defer decisions is over and that the climate policy carried out by Spain in the last 25 years, “when it has not been totally denial, has been unambitious.”
“This is an important day”, has valued the scientist who has specified that the experts have ratified in the demands of the demand: that Spain adopt more demanding commitments since at present it is “limiting itself to the minimum required by the European Union “.
“We are in a climate emergency situation as the government itself has declared, therefore we must be more active, ambitious and quick to make decisions,” defended Baldasano.
Increase structural inequality
For his part, Ruiz Ramos celebrated having had the opportunity to explain and clarify the fundamental aspects of the report.
Thus, it has indicated that the report summarizes the already existing knowledge and that it proves that climate change has on the gender gap in Spain and why it tends to increase the structural inequality that “already exists, but is increasing.”
From the knowledge of this by the administration, he has argued that, in fact, “all these aspects” are included in public documents such as the Spanish Climate Change Strategy; the strategy against energy poverty or the declaration of the climatic and environmental emergency.
Finally, the lawyer for the lawsuit of the three environmental NGOs, Lorena Ruiz Huerta, has celebrated the “magnificent” opportunity to hear the recommendations of the scientific community that warn of the “seriousness and urgency” and the “need for the Government to act now. “
Violates article 14 of the Spanish Constitution
Finally, it has stated that the experts have detailed the direct impacts and the critical situation that climate change will cause in Spain and has ratified the need for the Government to increase
“much more” the percentage of emission reductions, up to 55 percent in 2030 because he believes that the 23 percent currently in force is “clearly insufficient”.
Ruiz Huerta has also pointed out how the high court has heard how climate change impacts “decisively” on women, “far above” the effects on men, which violates article 14 of the Spanish Constitution.
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Climate experts in the ‘trial against the State’