On the occasion of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change held in Paris, activists of the Green Forum, the national network of environmental NGOs, held a protest action today, before the constitutive session of the Croatian Parliament asking new MPs to provide concrete measures for achieving low- carbon development. Activists have argued that new parliamentarians, as well as the future government, require the topic of climate change to be on top of the list of priority issues.

Representatives have shared an appeal explaining how the transfer to renewable energy for the next few years at all levels will be key to combating climate change. The Croatian Parliament has a great responsibility because they are the last one that can still do something to promote sustainable development in Croatia and ensure our appropriate action to prevent climate chaos.

“In the case of projects such as drilling of the Adriatic for oil and the construction of a coal-fired power plant Plomin C, Croatia would have gone in a defeated direction of its energy policy for the next few decades and would significantly increase its contribution to climate change. Following the recent public discussion of the Low-carbon Strategy, this document will come before parliamentarians who, in contrast to the idea of low-carbon development, in all scenarios include the construction of a new coal-fired power plant. This will be one of the first tests for this session, where it is necessary that such a strategy be rejected by the members of the Strategy, “said Toni Vidan, head of the Green Action Energy Program.

The Paris agreement should be even more ambitious than the previously adopted goal of world governments to ensure that global temperatures rise is below 2 ° C, which is the limit for which scientists say if we want to avoid catastrophic consequences for humans and ecosystems. If we want to achieve this goal, 80% of the well-known fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) must remain unused and as a global society, we must get out of the “fossil era” by the middle of the century. We need an urgent transformation of the energy system, but also the localization of production.