MEP Miriam Dalli has hit out at the “empty rhetoric” of leaders who speak loudly about climate change but then waver when they are asked to commit to binding measures to cut carbon emissions.

“Citizens who are paying the high price of wild fires, droughts, floods and storms want leaders that are capable of addressing the real cause leading to this extreme weather,” the S&D vice-president told the European Parliament on Wednesday.

“We have had enough of empty rhetoric from those who say that they believe that climate change has to be addressed as a matter of urgency but then duck out when push comes to shove”.

Dr Dalli was speaking at the opening of a European Parliament debate on a new approach to tackling climate change. Her speech also came one day after Malta’s parliament unanimously voted to declare a climate emergency.

Malta’s vote commits the government to announce a cut-off date for petrol and diesel vehicle imports by the middle of next year and to announce a raft of other, as-yet undefined, emission-cutting measures by then.

In August, Environment Minister José Herrera announced that Dr Dalli would lead a commission responsible for outlining how Malta should gradually phase out combustion engine vehicles. 

Dr Dalli said that politicians however had to do more than acknowledging the climate emergency the planet was facing, and start the transition to decarbonised economies.

“We need the money to finance the required transition as early as next year,” she argued.

“It has to be both private and public money at the Member State level and at the EU level too”.

Dr Dalli listed some of the changes the S&D political grouping she forms part of are demanding, from a shift away from fossil fuels to investing in technologies addressing water scarcity and ocean-based climate actions they believe could deliver up to one-fifth of the emissions cuts needed by 2050.

“We have a choice to make: either state that in front of us we have a crisis and do nothing concrete about it or use this challenge to come out stronger, better and empowered,” she said.