Ms Jessica Dunne:

Táim an-bhuíoch don choiste as an tacaíocht chun óráid a thabhairt dóibh. I am a climate activist and today I am here not just for the young people growing up in the face of this crisis but for everyone who is suffering as a result of climate change today and every person who feels we need to do better, nationally and globally. Ireland has always been a country that has punched above its weight. Despite being a small nation, independent for just over a century, we have become a major player in many ways and not least in the climate sphere.

In 2002, Ireland became one of the first countries to put a tariff on the purchase of plastic bags, which has reduced our use of these bags by 90%. The proactiveness that Ireland displayed with this tariff is something that is desperately needed in the face of this crisis. Sadly, we seem to have entered a time where policies are marked by little major change. With COP27 on the horizon, I would like to look at how we are dealing with this crisis and how we can better be leaders in the climate sphere working towards a greener future.

Since 2019, I have organised strikes, worked in education and campaigned for various climate policies. I find that with each passing year, it becomes harder to be hopeful about our situation and harder to have faith in our decision-makers. I remember in May 2019, when the Irish Government declared a climate emergency, there was a sense of hope among us activists and a sense that this would surely be the beginning of a new chapter for Ireland where we treated the climate crisis with the urgency that it required. Unfortunately, in the years since, we have seen climate action plans that failed to commit to radical solutions and a repeated failure to meet our targets. In 2021 alone, Ireland purchased 1.4 million carbon credits. This purchase of credits is a way to save face while we continually fail to reduce our emissions. This attitude toward the carbon emission reduction targets seems blatantly careless. There is a sense that the Government believes that if we do not meet our targets, we can simply buy ourselves out of the consequences. Our current unwillingness to disrupt business as usual has led us to pour millions into these carbon credits, instead of using this money to invest in green infrastructure and renewable energies. Instead of working towards solutions, it seems that we are only buying time.

In November, many of those present will be travelling to Sharm el-Sheikh for COP27. Twenty-seven times we have met with the rest of the world to discuss solutions to this crisis and what do we have to show for that? Last year, attending COP26 I felt this sense of urgency and a sense that while little had resulted from previous years, change out to come out of this Conference of the Parties, COP. We were coming out of a global pandemic in which global leaders had learned at first hand how to deal with the crisis of urgency and with only eight years before irreversible climate change set in, it seemed that it was time for action. Out of that COP, we got the lacklustre commitment to the phasing down of fossil fuels. We got Jeff Bezos, owner of the major polluter Amazon being platformed. COP26, once again, was simply an empty promise and a photo opportunity. This year, we are already off to a rocky start as Coca-Cola, one of the biggest plastic polluters in the world, is sponsoring the COP. The representatives of Ireland this year must change the story; they must engage in dialogue with more radical solutions in mind and then, when the COP comes to a close, incorporate these solutions into the agreement and into our policies. They should treat it like the emergency that the Oireachtas declared it to be and do not waste another COP on lip service.

An issue that we see again and again at the COP is the way developed countries speak over those most impacted by the climate crisis. In Glasgow, 130 nations proposed the loss and damage facility, a formal delivery body for funding related to mitigating the way in which the climate crisis disproportionately impacts these countries. The facility was not included in the Glasgow agreement, having been blocked by the EU and the US. Their proposed alternative, technical systems, fell short. Mohamed Adow, from Climate Action Network International explained aptly, “If you had your house burned by fires or destroyed by sea level rise, the [proposal] the rich world wanted was only going to pay for the expert to assess the damage, but not to pay you to rebuild your house". At this COP, Ireland most lead the way in uplifting those most impacted by the climate crisis. We must understand that we cannot achieve climate justice by maintaining the power structures where only wealthy developed countries held the power. That way we prescribe the wrong solutions and that way, we perpetuate the inequalities that led to this crisis. While COP should be about dialogue, even more so for countries like Ireland, it should be about listening.

I remember being 14 sitting in class and for the first time grasping the weight of the climate crisis. I remember going to my first climate strike and understanding that without us climate protesters on the streets making noise, we could not trust politicians to respond to this crisis. I remember celebrating when Ireland declared a climate emergency and the bitter disappointment I felt as years went by and nothing improved. I am 18 now and two COPs later, I am here saying the same things to this committee that we have been saying for years. I do not want to look in the future and see these conversations repeated over and over, while nothing changes. We know there is a crisis; we have the solutions. As Mary Robinson said after Glasgow, "You can’t negotiate with science”. We ran out of time for discussion and negotiation long ago. It is time for action.