Pippa Hackett (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairperson, Deputy Leddin, and the Cathaoirleach, Senator Daly. I welcome Deputy Leddin and his Dáil colleagues to the Upper House of the Oireachtas, and we get a kick out of doing so.

Today is an historic day in the Seanad and I appreciate being part of it. I thank the Chairperson and his committee colleagues for arranging this meeting and making it happen. I thank the representatives of Foróige and Comhairle na nÓg for agreeing to participate, for their time and for their commitment to this cause.

The young people present know that Ireland and the whole world will face significant challenges in next 30 years. They will have reached my current age in 30 years' time. If that thought is not frightening enough by then, as a nation and a species, we will have either succeeded in meeting our emissions targets and reversing biodiversity loss or we will be in totally uncharted territory. You know this. I do not need to hypothesise on what this failure might look like. Many experts and scientists have described what the situation will look like for people and nature across the world. People from Sir David Attenborough to sports personalities like Sebastian Vittel to media celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio are pretty effective in describing devastating scenarios far more effectively than I can.

Mr. Jerry Bostick, a former NASA flight controller, was interviewed in advance of the creation of the movie "Apollo 13" . He was asked if flight controllers ever panicked to which he replied: "No. When bad things happened we just calmly laid out all the options, and failure was not one of them". That attitude is what we need now. We must review our options but exclude failure. You and young people more generally are telling us, the policymakers, that we need to do more and we learned this week that we must do more. We learned that even if we implement all of our current policies then we will still not have met our 2030 targets, which is not good enough and we all know that.

I recommit to actively pursue policies that move us from our dependence on fossil fuel be that in our energy systems, transport systems, agricultural systems and land use. By doing so, we will support biodiversity and ecosystems.

I recommit to pursuing actively policies that move us from a dependence on fossil fuels, be it in our energy, transport or agriculture systems or our land use. By doing this we will also support biodiversity and our ecosystems. We policymakers need something from those present. We need them to continue to use their voices and their votes, when they are old enough to use them, to influence others, and to use their spending power to choose climate action every term. We need them to choose sustainable fashion, use public transport, buy local and perhaps spend less time online. They need to place climate action at the core of their decisions and call out inaction among their family, friends, community and public representatives. As a society, we simultaneously want to act while not wanting to act, at least not yet. This contradiction is a phase and we will move beyond it, but the question is, "When?" Those present can help enormously with speeding up this action.

I will leave those present with one thought, namely, a personal belief that it will be community and collaboration, not individualism, that will get us through this. I thank them for their willingness to work in their communities. That is evident today.

Unfortunately, commitments will take me off to Bloom, and I am sad to miss the interjections and communications from those present today, but I will look back on the video recording and look forward to hearing what said. I am off with my trusty constituency team, Rosie, Julie, Vlas and Sinead, who are in the Gallery. We are going by bus and foot, and perhaps bike, to the Phoenix Park. I wish those present a wonderful day and I hope they enjoy every moment of it. They need to remember it is very historic. I thank the Chairman.