Following record temperatures in Germany this summer, a senior official in the Environment Ministry says the country needs a national heat action plan for next summer.<\/p>\n
“I believe the lesson we have learned from this summer is: next summer we also need a national action plan that then bundles together everything from the [German federal] states,” Environment Ministry State Secretary Jochen Flasbarth told public broadcaster ZDF on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The federal government was working very closely with state governments, many of which already had heat action plans, he said.<\/p>\n
Almost 10,000 people across Germany had died due to high temperatures by mid-July, according to estimates from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s public health agency. That is more than in any full year since 2016.<\/p>\n
Asked about the situation in hospitals, many of which are not equipped with air conditioning, Flasbarth sharply criticized the Federal Court of Auditors.<\/p>\n
The Environment Ministry had a programme called Climate Adaptation in Social Facilities, he said, but the auditors had strongly criticized the ministry for significantly exceeding its powers.<\/p>\n
Flasbarth said the government was determined to challenge the criticism.<\/p>\n
“We want to tackle this, we even want to set a constitutional amendment in motion now so that this completely excessive criticism from the Federal Court of Auditors comes to nothing,” he said.<\/p>\n
Flasbarth stressed that adapting to extreme heat was a challenge for society as a whole and said progress was too slow.<\/p>\n
He also criticized those who repeatedly argued for a more cautious approach to tackling climate change, saying they were “creating the suffering of the day after tomorrow.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following record temperatures in Germany this summer, a senior official in the Environment Ministry says the country needs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65762,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4370,49711,20945,5,49707,49708,49712,43757,49709,49710],"class_list":["post-65761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-environment-ministry","tag-german-federal","tag-german-official","tag-germany","tag-jochen-flasbarth","tag-national-action-plan","tag-national-heat","tag-robert-koch-institute","tag-secretary-jochen-flasbarth","tag-un-climate-change-conference"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}