Climate change kills, Spanish PM tells deniers at launch of plan to tackle crisis

Pedro Sánchez said the climate emergency had caused more than 20,000 deaths and cost €32bn in material losses over the past five years. Photograph: Chema Moya/EPA

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has announced a 10-point plan to prepare the country for the climate emergency, warning: “If we don’t want to bequeath our children a Spain that’s grey from fire and flames, or a Spain that’s brown from floods, then we need a Spain that’s greener.”

Sánchez said August’s heatwave-fuelled wildfires – which killed four people, burned through an area six times the size of Ibiza and required “the biggest human and technical deployment” ever seen in Spain – showed that immediate action must be taken to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis.