The collective denounces the State Budget (OE) policies for “leading society into climate hell”. It claims that the Government “has no solutions for the climate crisis and social collapse” and calls on society to join the “Stop While We Can” demonstration and action on November 23rd.
This morning, Climáximo supporters poured red dye on the fountain of the Caixa Geral de Depósitos building that houses the various government ministries, signalling the State Budget proposal as “criminal” and stating that the government has “blood on its hands” for fuelling the climate crisis.
Alice Gato, a Climáximo supporter, says that “over several weeks, discussions on the State Budget, the general debate on which begins today, have been limited to behind-the-scenes games, leaving aside the real implications of public policies on people’s lives. For months, these discussions have been reported by the media as if they were a soap opera, and the climate crisis, the greatest threat humanity has ever faced, has not even been a footnote. Amidst partisan dramas, youth income tax and corporate income tax, the policies that are really needed to halt the collapse have been left out”.
Climáximo sees this State Budget and the decisions that will be carried out by these ministries as part of the ongoing normalisation in society of acts of violence against life by governments and companies. “Like empty institutional processes, such as the 29th United Nations Climate Conference (COP) to be held in November, the State Budget shows that governments will not save us from the destruction that is underway. On the contrary, they are consciously stepping on the accelerator towards climate hell. This is the budget of the state of war in which we find ourselves. They continue to lead us into a world of increasing fires, droughts, crop failures and disastrous floods, such as those that have already killed 51 people since yesterday in Valencia, compromising everything that people value: a fair and democratic society, decent living conditions and a habitable planet on which to thrive”, says Alice.
The collective declares that “it is not in the offices of ministers that the change of course needed to halt the ongoing destruction and dismantle the fossil fuel industry before it is too late will be found: it must be ordinary people everywhere — workers, students, mothers, fathers, children, precarious workers, the unemployed, grandparents, grandchildren — who put an end to these constant attacks on life by governments and ensure survival”. Climáximo therefore calls on “the whole of society” to join the mass civil resistance demonstration and action Stop While We Can, on November 23rd, which will set off at 3 pm from Praça Paiva Couceiro to block Praça do Chile in order to “break the normalisation of the violence of the climate crisis and start a debate in society that is not on the agenda of the COP or the State Budget: how are we going to stop this war before it’s too late?”