Years and years of climate change denialist and delaying discourse have exploded within the PP in the devastation caused by a DANA that is precisely the result of the climate crisis. A journey that goes from mocking José María Aznar’s “climate apocalypse” to abolishing the Valencian Climate Change Agency and taxes to raise resources to mitigate and adapt to the emergency climate which led this year to the emergence of the president of the Valencian Generalitat, Carlos Mazón. Because attached to the speech are followed by concrete measures of action or inaction.
A starting point for this position of the leaders of the Popular Party on the climate crisis can be found when Mariano Rajoy, chosen to succeed José María Aznar, spoke on the subject in 2007: “How can anyone say this what will happen in the future? the world in 300 years? I don’t know. This is an issue to which we must be very attentive,” he said. And the sentence he spoke next marked the line: “We cannot make it the number one global problem either.”
The truth is that that same year, 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its status report which said – among many findings – that “a greater risk of death and injury due to drownings was expected due to flooding. “Changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, coupled with rising sea levels, will predictably have extremely detrimental effects on natural and human systems,” emphasizes the document.
There is dissidence, denial organized around essentially economic interests or ideological political approaches that generate confusion, misinform and reject or slow down measures.
Rogelio Fernández Reyes
— Professor at the University of Seville
“There is dissent towards climate action,” says University of Seville professor Rogelio Fernández Reyes. “On the one hand, a normal psychological reaction of rejection of the major changes it entails, but also a denial organized around largely economic interests or ideological political approaches which generate confusion, misinform and reject or slow down measures. ” As scientific consensus and social recognition of the climate crisis have become established, this denial “has evolved into other positions. One of them is delayism, which admits the scientific results and the seriousness of the climate challenge, but delays the measures,” analyzes the researcher.
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, declared on Tuesday, announcing an aid program for those affected by DANA, that “climate change kills. We must adapt to this reality.
The denialist evolution is illustrated by the former president of the government, José María Aznar, when just a year after Mariano Rajoy he immersed himself in so-called climate skepticism, although in a memorable intervention at the foundation FAES he assured: “I am not what some call a climate change denier. The fact is that, immediately afterwards, he added: “I don’t know if there is climate change in which human action is – or is not – decisive. “I don’t know because I’m not a scientific expert on these issues.”
Then he made it ugly that they wanted to devote resources to fighting climate change: he shouted at those he called the “flag-bearers of climate apocalypse” because “they demand that They are spending hundreds of billions of euros to allocate them to questions as scientifically questionable as to their viability as being able to keep the temperature of planet Earth within limits in a hundred years. And solve a problem that our great-great-grandchildren may – or may not – have.
Delay permeates debates about climate action: opting for minimal actions or offloading responsibility to others. Focus on the socio-economic effects of climate policies, focusing on short-term disadvantages and threats to livelihoods
William F. Lamb et al.
— Speech on climate delay (Mercator Institute)
Precisely, containing global warming to less than an additional 1.5°C is the main objective of the 2015 Paris Agreement ratified by 195 of the 198 parties participating in the United Nations Convention on Climate Change.
President Sánchez insisted, in the midst of the tragedy created by this DANA, that we must be guided by science. “Because it gives us the elements to understand the planet and anticipate public policies that strengthen security. » “I would like the rest of regional and local administrations to do the same and not subscribe to the irresponsible speeches of climate emergency deniers,” said Sánchez. Since the start of this flood emergency, part of the right has been dedicated to spreading hoaxes and disinformation.
The delay
“Discourses of delay permeate debates about climate action,” explains a specific survey coordinated by William F. Lamb of the Mercator Institute for Climate Change Research. “Laggards opt for minimal actions or offload their responsibilities to others. They emphasize the socio-economic effects of climate policies, drawing attention to short-term disadvantages, while asserting that these measures “threaten the means of earning a living”, he concluded. .
Example: upon becoming president of the government, Mariano Rajoy announced a law on climate change up to three times. One during the Paris Climate Summit, another during the following COP in 2016 in Marrakech and a third during a meeting of political leaders in 2017. This law was never adopted.
At the same time, Rajoy’s Energy Minister, Álvaro Nadal, said he had not planned a timetable for the disengagement of thermal power plants: “A closure decreed as such is not envisaged.” In fact, Nadal wrote a decree to prevent electricity companies from closing their thermal power plants (and with them the CO2 emissions caused by burning coal).
With the new PP after Rajoy, a development in the same direction was observed. The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, shouted in the Madrid Parliament: “Since the Earth existed, since the beginning, there has always been climate change, there have been cycles. “They can’t continue against the scientific evidence because they still have so-called communism in mind.” He also floated the idea of placing a plant on each balcony as a climate measure.
No more green taxes and the Valencia Climate Agency
It is precisely the scientific evidence that has already confirmed that global warming has caused extreme rains (like this DANA) which have quadrupled their intensity in Spain. Additionally, climate change has most likely made this particular storm twice as likely, according to scientists at World Weather Attibution.
Just a few months ago, in March 2024, the president of the Valencian Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, announced to the employers’ association Treball Promotion which was going to eliminate before birth three taxes included in the law on climate change and ecological transition of the Valencian Community designed to “tax actions that degrade, violate, produce harmful effects or increase greenhouse gas emissions or increase vulnerability. They would also serve to encourage “adaptation to climate change”.
“I will not apply them because they do not help our competitiveness,” Mazón justified, following the arguments put forward by the research of William F. Lamb.
“In the Valencian Community, there has been a fairly pronounced denial and delay in the speeches that preceded or accompanied the measures adopted during the last period of regional government,” analyzes Rogelio Fernández Reyes, author of the report for ECODES. Counter-argument approach to denial and climate delay. Also, he adds, it would be necessary to analyze “the measures not taken in previous legislatures concerning occupied floodplains”.
The decisions anticlimate The current autonomous government of Carlos Mazón also abolished the Valencian Climate Change Agency. First, he reduced his budget from 400,000 to 2,000 euros for this year. And then, he ordered the repeal of the organization by law effective December 31, 2024.
“Retardantism is so subtle that it also accompanies us, as citizens, in our daily habits,” summarizes researcher Fernández Reyes. “With well-differentiated responsibilities, it is necessary to integrate the recognition of climate change, avoiding delays in speeches and taking measures as quickly as possible,” he concludes.
