Speaking at the VII Summit of Heads of State and Government of the regional organization, Petro assured that Celac can be the definitive space for Latin American integration “if we give it binding powers” of what is done, said and agreed.
The Colombian leader assured that there is a great distance between the rhetoric of Latin American integration and reality, citing as an example that the region does not know how to face the Covid-19 pandemic together.
In his opinion, Latin America and the Caribbean can use the experience of the European Union integrated as a bloc and use their own centrifugal forces within their diversity to concretize this unity.
He pointed out that the main problem facing humanity and the region in particular is the climate crisis, which is putting human lives at risk.
In Latin America, we have some geopolitical letters of immense power to speak when we speak together, and one of them is the Amazon jungle, which is said to be the third pillar to save humanity from the climate crisis.
He reiterated that the way out of this crisis is to reduce the consumption of coal and oil to zero, that is, to devalue fossil capital, which implies a real change in power and the world economy.
Petro added in his speech that when integrated into the grids related to electrical energy from Patagonia to Alaska, if clean energies such as wind, solar, hydro, geothermal were used, they could provide so much energy that not only the region would have security and surpluses.
But it could also be the engine to help progressive forces in the United States and Canada change their own electrical energy matrix.
He warned that “unless the United States becomes a decarbonized economy, humanity will die and we can negotiate this treaty.”
There is a possibility of Latin American and Caribbean integration, “but on the basis of recognizing our own power,” he stressed.
It’s not about the export of lithium or other necessary mining energy resources, it’s about its industrialization, it’s about the energies that start the industrialization process together with the knowledge so that it is the sign that the new Latin American progressivism for the future leaves.
“We don’t have to be exporters of crude oil and coal like gold once was, with the same colonial system as five centuries ago,” emphasized the ruler.
ro/otf