Hungary PM vows to plant10 trees for every newborn

BUDAPEST: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban vowed on Sunday to plant 10 trees for every newborn, in a move to address climate change. The announcement was part of the “climate action plan” which the government adopted last week, the nationalist premier said. “We will plant 10 trees for each newborn, which will increase the country´s forest area by 27 percent by 2030,” the nationalist premier said in his annual state-of-the-nation address.

He did not give any further details. Orban last month described the climate plan as a “Christian democratic” approach to tackling global warming — a label which he often uses for his policies, including his fierce opposition to immigration from Muslim countries.

The National Energy and Climate Plan sets out targets including 90 percent carbon-neutral electricity production by 2030, mostly from nuclear and solar energy. The strategy cements a recent change of tone by Orban and his ruling Fidesz party, whose politicians have often seemed ambivalent on climate change.

Last year, one of Orban´s senior ministers called Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg a “sick child” and her street movement “repellent” to ordinary Hungarians. Pro-Orban media commentators often cast doubt on the link between human-induced global warming and extreme weather events. After initially vetoing the EU´s carbon neutrality goal for 2050, Orban signed up in December after securing a concession from Brussels over the EU member´s reliance on nuclear energy. Orban on Sunday vowed to eradicate illegal landfills by July, ban disposable plastics, have only electric buses in cities by 2022 and financially “support the greening of small and medium-sized enterprises”. In an unsurprising stab at the EU leadership, he hailed Hungary´s “achievements” under his 10 years in power and railed against “the tired-out Brussels elite”. “We used to think that Europe is our future. Now we know that we are Europe´s future,” he said. In his state-of-the-nation speech last year, he announced a package of tax breaks and subsidies to encourage families to raise more children, a move he called “Hungary´s answer” to its falling population instead of increasing immigration.