Caritasverband Rheine participates as first signatory in the nationwide appeal for climate protection and sustainability
Rheine.cpr. Sustainability and climate protection are tasks that must be dealt with in the coming years and for the sake of the environment and the future of future generations. This is especially true for institutions, companies and organizations that have a greater impact than individuals by reducing their carbon footprint. However, in order to address these issues on such a structural level, planning security and certain prerequisites are needed.
For this reason, decision-makers from the Catholic Church are calling for reliable as well as permanent timetables in an appeal to politicians that will help minimize their own carbon footprint. Responsible persons from a total of 34 Caritas associations, the German Caritas Association, the diocesan Caritas associations of the various dioceses, as well as persons from five specialist Caritas associations and other responsible persons have signed the appeal as initial signatories. And it comes daily further in addition.
Caritas Rheine has also signed the appeal with the heading “We are ready” as an initial signatory. “We are ready to implement climate protection in a concrete way, to tackle the necessary changes and to pull together. However, there are still too many inhibiting framework conditions and ambiguities that massively slow down effective climate protection,” said the appeal to the federal government and state government. In particular the reorganization of social mechanisms and public buildings should be subsidized, since non-profit carriers of social mechanisms and services do not have the financial resources and promotions, in order to be able to convert this reorganization alone.
“Caritas Rheine has also been working on reducing its own carbon footprint for some time. Thus some real estates are already comprehensively energetically reorganized. In addition, the expansion of photovoltaic systems is being advanced wherever it is technically feasible and worthwhile in the long term,” explains Dieter Fühner, one of the two board members of the Caritas Association Rheine. “These measures are financed using free reserves of Caritas Rheine. These reserves are however finite, the perspective on an energetic modernization of all buildings is realistic only by an additional assistance of the country or the federation “, so Caritas executive committee Ludger Schröer.
All signatories of the appeal call on politicians to place scientific findings on climate catastrophe at the center of the debate. Politicians must do justice to the fact that the climate catastrophe has long since begun and that thousands of deaths are already being claimed every year as a result of heat, droughts or floods. In the same way, climate change is already causing billions of euros in economic damage in the global south.
The appeal “We are ready” and the list of all first signatories are available at http://www.wirsindbereit.net.