Salzburg Greens leader urges action as heat intensifies

Salzburg Greens leader Martina Berthold has called for stronger political action to protect people from extreme heat, telling ORF Salzburg that climate protection is increasingly being felt through everyday living conditions.

In the ORF Salzburg summer interview, Berthold said temperatures above 30 degrees were placing a heavy burden on many people. She said politicians needed to ensure that temperatures did not exceed 30 degrees in senior citizens’ homes and apartments, and that children in schools and kindergartens were not exposed to extreme heat.

Berthold said people who could not afford external blinds also needed support. She described a hand fan she had brought to the interview as her small cooling system and said its message, against hot air, reflected the need for political action.

She said conversations in municipalities showed that people were dissatisfied with the way politics was currently being conducted. Climate protection, she argued, was now appearing in a different form, involving questions about how people would live in 10 or 20 years and what life would be like in old age.

Berthold said she was particularly concerned about her elderly parents and mother-in-law, who is over 90. Because of the heat, she said, her mother-in-law could no longer safely go outside in the afternoon.

The interview took place at the Mitteregg inn on the Gaisberg mountain, which Berthold chose as a nearby recreational area for Salzburg residents. She has led the Salzburg Greens for almost four years and has chaired the parliamentary group of the smallest opposition party in the state parliament for more than three years.