ZAGREB, November 1, 2019 – Environmental policies are not expensive for citizens, the vice president of the German Greens party, Jamila Schaefer, said in Zagreb on Thursday.
The social and environmental policies are not opposed to each other, she said at a panel on climate change. Why don’t we use public money to prevent natural disasters that are related to climate change, she asked.
Critics of green policies say workers will pay for the bulk of the switch to a circular economy, but Schaefer said Greens were winning over more and more trade unions for their ideas and that environmental policies should be pursued by investing in sustainable industries and by penalising polluting industries.
She is against building an LNG terminal on the Croatian island of Krk. We Greens are totally against investing in past technologies, she said.
Industries which damage the environment should become non-profitable through taxation, Schaefer said, adding that the burden of new taxes would be offset by revenue from CO2 tax, which would be redistributed to the population.
To profit in an unsustainable way will become non-profitable. We must preserve our life resources. That’s more important than profit, she said.
Tomislav Tomašević of the We Can! platform said the problem was that the climate issue was seen as elitist. Our job is to change that perception among the rural population as they will lose the most to climate change, he added.
Croatian Peasant Party vice president Hrvoje Petrić said that in Croatia, outside cities, climate change was not recognised as a big problem.
It’s not an issue we can resolve within borders but as Europeans and as people, said Schaefer.
More news about environmental protection can be found in the Lifestyle section.
