Los Angeles (USA), Apr 18 (EFE).- The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, assured that it is an “enormous mistake” that Latin American countries continue to bet on oil and coal as the basis of their economy during a talk he held this Tuesday at Stanford University in San Francisco (California).
“It is a huge economic mistake because humanity has to give up oil and coal. To depend exclusively on that is to depend on a thread that is going to break,” said Petro, who met with students and academics from the renowned institution.
In addition, the president stressed that the error of these political decisions is also due to the “enormous potential” that Latin America has to produce clean energy and stated that the region would play an important role in the “hypothetical scenario and the future of a decarbonized economy”. .
He had already addressed this issue on Monday during his speech in New York on the occasion of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, where he announced that it would be one of the issues that he will discuss with President Joe Biden at a meeting in Washington on Thursday.
In the colloquium this Tuesday, dedicated to the role of the current economy on climate change, Petro emphasized that “the beginning of the times of human extinction” is being lived and made an urgent call to find the “short path” to stop the environmental crisis.
“The logical and coherent answer, like the one given at the end of the 19th century, is that humanity organized among themselves would have to make a world revolution against capital,” said the president.
From his point of view, this could only be achieved with the creation of a “global public power” capable of regulating “what the market cannot”.
Petro concluded by stating that the United Nations and the world summits on climate change have not brought fundamental changes to the current economy, which he points out as “responsible” for the global emergency and for the inequalities between developed countries and the “misnamed countries of the Third World”.
The Colombian president began his day in San Francisco with a private meeting with the director and students of the prestigious Stanford University.
Petro continues his US tour this week by meeting with Biden, the central event of the trip, to discuss the possible lifting of sanctions on Venezuela, among other issues.
The arrival of Petro in August 2022 at the Casa de Nariño, the presidential headquarters of his country, seems to have strengthened relations with the White House, diminished by the closeness that the previous Colombian president, Iván Duque, had with Donald Trump.
