Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I want to start by being absolutely honest about COP27 from my perspective. It has been a colossal failure and nothing of real substance has been achieved. As one report noted, it will make no difference whatsoever, the fossil fuel industry will continue to expand, greenhouse gas emissions will increase and the climate crisis will get worse. As if to copper-fasten this, the Minister granted a licence to Europa Oil & Gas (Holdings) plc before he flew to Egypt. We will see thousands, if not millions of tonnes of additional CO₂being released into the atmosphere as a result of that decision if the company is successful. That, indeed, will fly in the face of the science and will lock us into decades of more reliance on fossil fuel infrastructure.

What should we say about the much-lauded loss and damage fund. I know plenty of NGOs and individuals who have welcomed it and I respect their view but I am extremely doubtful of its effectiveness and of its likely success. The details are hopelessly vague or, more accurately, completely non-existent. We do not know where the money is to come from, when or how it will come. We are told that a transitional committee will be set up by world governments, which will then work with a view to operationalising the funding arrangements. They will invite:

international financial institutions to consider, at the 2023 Spring Meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund, the potential for such institutions to contribute to funding arrangements, including new and innovative approaches, responding to loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change.

To translate that into English, next year we will set up a committee to look into inviting private institutions to consider funding a possible fund. We will trust the future of vulnerable nations and peoples to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and will look at innovative approaches to funding arrangements. What could go wrong? When has the World Bank or the IMF ever let down the people of the developing world or indeed workers and ordinary people anywhere? The Minister is aware that I am being entirely ironic when I ask that question.

While the failure on the actual emissions and the supposed deal on loss and damage have made the headlines, I want to highlight what I believe to be another major failure of COP27. This is the continued support for carbon markets and carbon trading as a mechanism to curb emissions. People Before Profit has long argued that the carbon trading system and the very idea of carbon credits is a set-up for fraud and utter failure. It is simply a medieval indulgence to allow for continued fossil fuel use. Whatever hope there was in this system must surely have rested on the fact that it should be open and transparent and where we could see what was working and what was not, even in the logic of a carbon market. Incredibly, however, COP27 has made even that idea more remote. There is an excellent summary on the website called climateandcapitalism.com.

It states:

COP27 managed to take a giant leap in the wrong direction when governments agreed two paragraphs on confidentiality and Article 6. The first paragraph starts as follows: "The participating Party may designate information provided to the Article 6 technical expert review team during the review as confidential."

There goes openness and transparency. One observer stated: "The confidentiality provisions on [Article] 6.2 are [so] embarrassing. You could drive a space shuttle through that loophole and have plenty of room on all sides."

This guarantees that we will have more fraudulent accounting of emissions, allows for more global emissions and profiteering and shores up a system of three decades or more of catastrophic failure to rein in the fossil fuel interests driving this crisis.

COP28 will be no different from COP27 and the answer to the crisis lies outside the conference halls of the great and the good. It lies with those fighting for global justice against a capitalist system that is causing the crisis. There is no hope in the mechanisms of market and capital, but there is hope in young people who are correctly identifying that we need system change and to stop the rush for profits, and that we need to see it as the cause of our planet overheating.

Is the Minister aware of Ronan Browne, a young student in UCD who has been on hunger strike since last Wednesday? Mr Browne intends to go on thirst strike tomorrow. His desperation to highlight this crisis and demand action has brought him to this point, namely, endangering his own life? I ask the Minister to take note of that and visit or make contact with Ronan Browne. Young people are in a desperate panic about what is happening to the planet and their future. They mobilise and fight back but they feel very frustrated about it. It behoves the Minister, as the person responsible, to answer that young man and persuade him to fight back against the system but not to take any chances with his own health and life.

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