Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I agree strongly with Ms Burke. Thinking about timeframes, Professor FitzGerald reminded me that Sue Scott wrote something about this issue in 1992. I recently found a dust-covered book on my shelf written by my colleague, John Gormley, which set out the science of climate change. It was written in 1988 or 1989 but it could have been written yesterday. The time for marginal change is over; it is time for a change to the system. In our work we have to think about the world 30 years from now and 30 years is nothing. We have to change our entire transport, agriculture, land use, energy and industrial systems if we are to play our part in halting runaway, dangerous climate change.

While I support the introduction of higher carbon tax and absolutely agree with the idea of a carbon floor price in the emissions trading scheme, ETS, those steps would represent marginal change. The Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, made it clear, as did the Department of Finance's tax strategy group, that such actions do not send out the correct signal. Even if we doubled the carbon tax to twice the level proposed by the advisory council or twice the level the Department of Finance has stated it would even consider, it would still not deliver system change but rather marginal change.

By Christmas, we have to have a new national climate and energy plan. Our Government has admitted the existing plan is a complete failure. That is only in terms of three months, forget about 30 years.

In terms of the approach we take to this, should we not start by asking the question Professor FitzGerald asked, namely, what carbon neutrality means for land use in 2050. In that way, we will know where we are going. Is that not the first thing we have to determine? Similarly, what is a zero carbon energy system? In my mind, I am thinking of three decades. Where would I get the answer to these questions? Has anyone in the State written some sort of vision for zero carbon energy, transport and carbon-neutral land use systems? That has knock-on consequences. Where do I get that analysis? Who has written it? Is that not the way we should go? Rather than just obsessing on 2020 or 2030, should we not think big? We will have to take some bets on electrification of everything and on land use in various ways, but do we not need to start by thinking at the end point and considering the system changes we need to get there?