The Polish Greens - Partia Zieloni - react to the EU Council of 12 December 2019 where EU leaders agreed to 2050 carbon neutrality deal without Poland:
As the co-chairs of the Green Party in Poland, we are sad and embarrassed to hear that by the decision of the Government of the Republic of Poland, Poland was alone in not supporting the European Union’s goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.
Thus, Poland remains the last EU country that not only denies the alarming information from the world’s scientific community regarding the climate catastrophe that threatens us, but that directly threatens the safety, well-being, health and even the lives of millions of citizens.
Polish citizens are already directly experiencing the effects of the rapidly changing climate in Poland: the heat waves, increasingly extreme weather events, worsening droughts, increasingly frequent water shortages, a decrease in the efficiency of food production and the consequently higher food prices, an increase in energy prices and the air pollution, which causes 50.000 deaths annually.
"The world is dying, and we don't even notice it," said Polish writer and activist Olga Tokarczuk during her acceptance speech of the Nobel Prize for Literature. The words of the Nobel laureate were not a literary parable, but the sad truth, supported by the world’s scientific community beyond any doubt. The climate crisis is one of the biggest challenges facing Poland, the European Union and the world, which is why it is so important to set a common European goal of carbon neutrality.
Today's decision by the Polish Government leaves Poland, the only country opposing Europe's climate policy, without political or financial support. It leaves Poland no chance for a dignified participation in the Just Transition Fund and the 100 billion euro budget that the European Union will devote to this task - it leaves Poland without an incentive to produce clean energy from renewable sources to support a fair, sustainable transition away from coal based energy.
The decision of Prime Minister Morawiecki brings us closer to Vladimir Putin's Russia, because we will be forced to increase coal imports from Russia, which increases Poland’s energy dependence on our eastern neighbour. But most importantly, we will lose time - the following years will bring us closer to the climate catastrophe until the moment when we will no longer be able to stop its effects.
Mr. Prime Minister, as the prime minister of a large European country, you had the tools in your hands to slow down or perhaps stop the destruction of the world. Instead of using them for good and acting like a statesman, you behaved like an antique merchant. In the name of short-sighted financial interests, you have traded our security and our future. In whose name did you do this? Whose interests do you represent, Prime Minister?
Co-chairs Małgorzata Tracz and Marek Kossakowski of Partia Zieloni
