Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It is not mine.

The consequences of the failure and collapse of these great civilisations, including Egypt or Mesopotamia, was localised because they did not span the whole planet and the level of technology at the time was not capable of damaging the entire planet. As other parts of the world developed later, what happened in those civilisations was not a catastrophe for the whole world. The difference today is we live in a global system where the level of technological development is such that if we get this wrong it means not only will localised civilisation collapse, with devastating consequences, but civilisation on a globalised level will collapse. That is the stake. Sadly, the same type of short-term thinking which led to the collapse of those great civilisations continues in the minds of the global elites of today, including governments and large institutions.

This failure to understand the need to think about and invest in the future and to secure and underpin the basis of our civilisation was reflected in the Minister's justification for rejecting the Bill. He set economic growth against the issue of having strict targets when it comes to the reduction of CO2 emissions and fossil fuel use. He said it nicely and diplomatically, but the bottom line of what he said in his speech was that we must be careful about how we balance these things and let us not have too stringent targets which might damage economic growth. This is a completely false dichotomy as there will not be an economy if we do not deal with this problem. The economic damage being done as a result of climate change is apparent throughout the world and we have started to see it in a serious way in this country with the issue of serious flooding and the huge costs resulting from it. We see it on a far greater scale in places such as Bangladesh and other parts of the world. We must absolutely not set against one another the issues of economic growth and development and dealing with climate change.

The truth is the opposite of the dichotomy the Minister suggested. It would be extremely good for our economy and its economic development to address as a matter of urgency the issue of climate change and move to the development of sustainable renewable energy sources which do not do economic damage and which can underpin an economy in the long term. The Minister implied it would be even more difficult for Ireland because of the nature of the Irish economy but the opposite is the truth. We are perfectly positioned - we are probably better positioned than any country in Europe - to move rapidly towards the development of renewable energy resources, and even more so given the economic and unemployment crises we now face whereby 430,000 people are unemployed and tens of thousands of people with skills and education are flooding out of the country. These people could deploy these skills in developing sustainable energy sources and addressing climate change which would also be good for the economy. There are several such areas including forestry. It is crazy that we are discussing selling the harvesting rights of our State forests when forestry is key to addressing the issue of climate change and could also be a rich mine for employment prospects and developing sustainable industry and enterprise. We are going to give it away to global asset strippers who have no interest in the development of our forests and have no understanding or interest in their importance in dealing with climate change and creating carbon sinks.

The painfully slow roll out of retrofit insulation is ridiculous given its importance in reducing energy use and the huge amount of employment which could be generated if we rolled out a national scheme and invested in a huge programme of retrofit insulation. We need massive investment in wind, wave and current power but the policy of the Government is primarily to facilitate gas and oil companies in pillaging our gas and oil resources, from which we will get virtually no revenue, and no policy is in place to demand that any revenues the State does derive from gas and oil, which are damaging fuels, should be ring-fenced to invest in renewable energy resources to ensure we move away from the use of fossil fuels. Public transport is being cut and moves are being made towards privatisation when what we need is enormous State investment in the expansion of cheap public transport which would move people out of cars and into a form of transport which is less damaging to the environment. On all these fronts governments are failing and the Government's refusal to sign up to stringent targets is indicative of the lack of seriousness with which it is looking at this issue which is critical to our future.

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