Key figures from the Hungarian government and the Hungarian economy and business life will be present at our Budapest Economic Forum event on October 17.
The initiator 11 specialist:
- Judit Bartholy, meteorologist, professor at ELTE, doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, candidate of geographical sciences
- Balázs Felsmann, economist, member of the public board of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
- András Gelencsér, chemical engineer, rector of Pannon University, university professor, corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
- László Haszpra, meteorologist, ELTE, Pannon University, MATE university professor, MTA PhD
- Alexandra Köves, Ecological Economist, associate professor at Corvinus University
- Mónika Lakatos, meteorologist, Hungaromet climate expert, member of the public body of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
- Judit Mádlné Szőnyi, hydrogeologist, ELTE university professor, MTA PhD
- László Pintér, agroecologist, CEU professor
- Katalin Sulyok, lawyer, biologist, teaching assistant at ELTE
- Eörs Szathmáry, Széchenyi Prize-winning evolutionary biologist, professor at ELTE, ordinary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
- Diána Ürge-Vorsatz, physicist, CEU professor, vice-president of the IPCC
“We, the professionals working in Hungarian climate science and related fields, aware of the huge and increasingly problematic environmental challenges of our time, feeling responsible for ensuring livable living conditions for present and future generations, seeing that the global and domestic responses to climate change so far, although showing partial results, overall, they do not result in sufficient changes, with the aim of promoting the acceleration and initiation of the necessary positive changes, and using our knowledge and credibility
contribute to the start of meaningful social dialogue and to raising it to a higher level of action based on research results related to climate change
we would like to draw attention to the following in relation to the effects of climate change and the possibilities of dealing with the problems” – begins document.
The experts summarized their messages in 10 points, from which we highlight some details, the full statement by clicking here readable.
1. You have to face the problems. “Human activity is primarily responsible for the destruction of the biosphere, the depletion of resources, and the already perceptible and increasingly serious climate changes, which are taking on a larger scale than ever before and are constantly increasing.” (…) “Human activity significantly intervenes in environmental processes in many other ways and causes negative changes, climate change is not the only environmental problem.”
2. The negative effects of climate change can already be felt and will worsen. “(1) an increase in the frequency and intensity of heat waves, which entails serious health risks, (2) floods and flash floods caused by heavy rains, which make agricultural production impossible, and can trigger serious landslides and mudslides in mountainous environments, (3) the new pests can pose new challenges with the spread of infections and epidemics, (4) an increase in the frequency of dry periods and droughts, which on the one hand threaten food security and, on the other hand, increase the chance of fires, (5) an increase in the intensity and frequency of temperate storms, tropical cyclones, hurricanes, which are windstorms causes serious damage, (6) in addition, the appearance of any of the dangers listed so far can cause significant damage to the built environment and other infrastructure”.
Budapest Economic Forum 2024
Key figures from the Hungarian government and the Hungarian economy and business life will be present at our Budapest Economic Forum event on October 17.
3. Instead of adapting or reducing emissions, adapt AND reduce emissions right now. (…) “at the same time, emphasis must be placed on curbing, minimizing or eliminating activities that cause damage, and on the other hand, we must be prepared to adapt to the inevitable effects”. (…) “immediate, even lower emission reduction means more to mitigate the damage caused, than deferred or even more significant reduction measures”.
4. The most able can do the most. “If no one else would change, only the richest 1% of the Hungarian population would reduce their energy consumption to the EU average, Hungary’s energy consumption would decrease by one-tenth. And if the top one-tenth did the same, energy consumption would drop by nearly a third.”
5. Different actions must reinforce each other. (…) “Agriculture also benefits from maintaining natural ecosystems in sufficiently large areas”.
6. Without natural stability, we have no future. “Our forests, fields, marshy wetlands, and soils do us a huge service, among many other things, by binding some of the greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere. Human activity also endangers them”.
7. We value our environmental resources! “We need rules that make the energy and material demand transparent and quantifiable in all aspects of production and consumption, as well as the environmental burden and costs associated with their production, use and waste management. It is harmful and unacceptable if an environment a highly polluting good or service is cheaper than its less environmentally burdensome alternative”.
8. Prosperity instead of prosperity. “We must move beyond our view of economic growth for its own sake. The real goal of the economy must be to ensure a “good life” for everyone within the natural renewable capacity of our Earth”.
9. Emission reduction is impossible without solidarity. “We can do something to mitigate the harmful effects of climate change in these years, and if we do not take meaningful action now, we will condemn them to suffer consequences that are increasingly difficult to bear”.
10. Joint action can turn climate anxiety into a driving force. “Every person has a way to do something for a more livable future, since everyone influences the future in their many social roles; as a consumer, voter, role model, investor, through his work or in any other community, through his activities that affect others”.
András Gelencsér is a regular external author of the Portfolio On The Other Hand column.
The cover image is an illustration. Cover image source: Getty Images
Source: www.portfolio.hu
