Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I thank our guests for their presentations and, in particular, for their campaigning, the Fridays for Future school strikes and the activism that has pushed the agenda on climate, biodiversity and the general ecological crisis we face here and throughout the world. I presume some of this will be a little frustrating for them when they go home, because they will have come and said we are facing this devastating crisis and that we are not doing enough, and everyone who responds to them will say they agree. I assume that is the same when they meet all politicians from all parties. They say the work they are doing is great. There is something worth exploring as to why that is happening, not just to our guests but to young people in Britain, the US and China. Wherever climate activism is happening, young people are being patronised by older politicians telling them they are right and that what they are doing is great, but then business as usual continues. Something is going wrong. People who are telling them they agree with them actually do not agree with them, or certainly do not agree with them to the extent of doing something about it.

The UN Secretary General, speaking in the context of the latest IPCC report, stated:

Some Government and business leaders are saying one thing, but doing another. Simply put, they are lying.

I put it to our guests to consider whether that is taking place when they engage with politicians. I do not mean particularly in this meeting, but I do mean including in this meeting. The point was made that it has been three years since we declared a climate emergency, so you would think we would be acting as though it was an emergency, whereas clearly we are not. We adopted a series of climate targets that are inadequate and now we are going to miss them. The Government, or large parts of it at least, is trying to push ahead with further fossil fuel infrastructure, in the form of LNG terminals, at a time of this climate emergency that we declared. It has overridden, undemocratically, the decision of South Dublin County Council to say it did not want any more data centres or all this unnecessary use of data that is about targeting people with adverts for unnecessary stuff, creating artificial wants. The county council said it did not want to use more and more of our electricity for that, which makes it more difficult for us to reach 100% renewable energy, yet the Government overturned that ban, which had been voted on by the council.

Similarly, there is no willingness within the political establishment to radically change the model of our agriculture system, the number one emitting sector in this country. It is like a verbotentopic to talk about the need to reduce the number of cattle in this country, which is just scientific. In terms of following the science and so on, there is no alternative. If we want to have a sustainable model of agriculture, we need to radically change to a regenerative model of agriculture.

The question is why all that is happening. Some people within the climate change movement are focused on the question of knowledge, and knowledge and raising awareness of climate change is very important. I would argue, however, that the problem here is fundamentally one of power and not of knowledge. We have known the science regarding climate change for decades. We know the science relating to biodiversity loss. As the Minister pointed out, there has been a 70% reduction in most animal populations. It is incredible. We know this is happening. The fossil fuel companies knew it first and covered it up, but now it is widely accepted and full-on climate change denial is quite rare now, yet still things are not happening and we are not following the science. I do not think, therefore, that fundamentally it is a question of knowledge, although clearly knowledge is important.

Rather, I think it is a question of power, and that gets to the point the Minister was making. He stated he was a big fan of democracy and said that was what would do it. I think democracy would be great, but I do not think we have it. Fundamentally, we do not live in a democratic society; we live in an ecocidal, capitalist society driven by the pursuit of profit and crashing through planetary boundary after planetary boundary to that end. The reason I argue we do not live in a democracy relates to the fact that none of us gets to choose what happens with fossil fuels. Those decisions are made by very wealthy corporations. In total, on the books of the fossil fuel companies – I checked this recently – they have 75 billion barrels of oil or oil equivalent. If they burn that, it will lead to a further 8°C of global warming. That is worth about €7 trillion to them, and that is the problem.

Fundamentally, in a sense, all of humanity’s future relies on this balance between these companies needing to take out those fossil fuels and burn them to be able to achieve the value they want to achieve and maximise their profit, and the rest of humanity depends on that not happening but we do not get a vote on that. We do not get a vote on the model of agriculture pursued by individual companies or whatever, on what Amazon does in its data centres or on any of the big issues in our economy. I do not accept that, fundamentally, we live in a democratic society because we do not have economic democracy, and I do not see how we will avoid climate catastrophe except by having economic democracy or by having ordinary people make the decision to leave fossil fuels in the ground.

It can even be seen in all this talk of 1 million electric cars. Come on. If the most ambitious plan the Government has is to shift from combustion engine cars to electric cars running on lithium that will be mined in an extremely destructive way that is extremely damaging to biodiversity and in terms of child labour and so on, that is not a significant system change. The reason for this relates to the fact the car industry, completely linked to the fossil fuel industry, is looking for a way to keep the whole thing going and keep growth of its industry going for the purpose of its profit. A more fundamental change is needed to reject this model of organising society based on profit to organising society in a genuinely economic way on the basis of eco-socialism and planning for people’s needs. If we leave these decisions in the hands of private profiteers, they will continue to externalise all these costs. What the change looks like includes leaving the fossil fuels in the ground, no more fossil fuel infrastructure, no more data centres, at least at this country and at this time, and free, frequent public transport. It does not have to be a crazy, radical, unachievable demand. We should provide people with public transport alternatives to get people out of cars, and support mass retrofitting and green jobs, which include care jobs that are low carbon such as in education, healthcare and so on. To achieve this, it will require fundamental system change, which is about economic democracy and planning our economy, as opposed to just saying we will allow things to continue for profit.

I have some questions for our guests, the first of which relates to carbon labelling. I support carbon labelling and I would vote for it tomorrow. My one concern relates to emphasis.

BP began to put a big emphasis on carbon footprint. It was about saying it is not about the stuff they have done and all the decisions that are taken before we go to the shop and buy our bananas, which have been imported from around the world in plastic. It is about individualising the problem. I am for it but is there a danger in ignoring the fundamental issue, which is production, as opposed to consumption and how production takes place? Second, do the witnesses have any comments in relation to COP27 being held in Egypt? Every year, it is a greenwashing affair but this year it is a greenwashing of an horrific dictatorship. It would be excellent for our young people here to send a message of solidarity to the young people in Egypt in light of the oppression they are facing. Third, I would be most interested in hearing about plans for the redevelopment of mass movements, big protests or anything like that coming up.