Our power, our planet.

Earth Day. Today.

This year with a very clear theme: Our Power, Our Planet.

And now I could stick to the nice words about nature and responsibility. Or I could say: isn’t this photo beautiful?

Unfortunately, reality is a little less romantic. The problem is not that we don’t know what is right. The problem is that we too often know. But…

But: in the EU we have more tools today than ever before. Concrete legislative frameworks to reduce emissions, protect nature and people, industrial responsibility, transform the economy…

We are no longer discussing whether we need rules. We are now discussing how many more we are prepared to keep.

Here are the famous “omnibus” packages. With one, for example, we are interfering with two key pieces of legislation on corporate reporting and their responsibility. In the name of simplification, we are getting fewer obligations and more flexibility.

Or better said: less pressure for the most influential. We have similar things at home – “intervention plans”: more for the rich, but for the remaining 99%… who cares, or what?

For many, compromises and coordination are no longer just a thing. It’s cheap populism. It’s because it’s clearly fashionable to be a hypocrite these days.

Like modern cheap products without any serious control over what they contain. Our market is flooded with eternal chemicals – substances that we have long known have no place in our environment.

(By the way: if you draw parallels with real people instead of products and substances – nothing wrong)

They even managed to water down one of the key European laws for forest protection. Even where we know that the consequences are direct and measurable, we are therefore willing to take a step back.

And then we ask ourselves why people are losing trust.

Part of the answer is also that space is increasingly opening up to policies that offer simple answers to complex problems.

To those who present responsible politics as something we “cannot afford anymore”. In reality, it is the opposite. We cannot afford not to have it.

At least environmental politics is not an ideological issue. Air and water are not abstract topics! That is why “Our Power, Our Planet” should not remain a slogan. The power exists. The only question is who uses it and how.