“We have no more time to lose,” said Van der Bellen in a video on the virtual “Leaders Event” entitled “Transformative Action for Nature and People”. “Our planet is in a state of emergency. In a year that will be another record year in terms of global warming,” warned Van der Bellen. Therefore “we have to make COP26 a success.”
“We have to live up to our responsibility. Every nation in the world has to do its part,” said the Federal President, recalling that Austria is “a country with particularly endangered Alpine regions” such as “mountains, glaciers, rivers, heathlands”. may be.
“We use the funds made available by the EU to protect and promote biological diversity,” said Van der Bellen. “We want to be climate neutral by 2040 and will introduce a CO2 tax by 2022. We will curb traffic by introducing a single affordable ticket for all public transport,” said the Federal President.
In addition, Van der Bellen had a bilateral meeting with UN Secretary General António Guterres on Wednesday afternoon (local time) together with Federal Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg (both ÖVP). Before the meeting with Guterres, the Federal President visited the New York Icahn School of Medicine to exchange ideas with Austrian microbiologists and vaccine scientists Florian Krammer and Peter Palese on the subject of combating corona.
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