Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

If we want to play our part in the global effort to mitigate the onward march of climate change, one of the primary and most essential steps we can take is to embrace the no new fossil frontiers principle and push for it to be enshrined in international law. This would mean lobbying for a Europe-wide ban on fracking, a ban on offshore drilling in the fragile Arctic region and the Amazon rain forest and a global moratorium on carbon-intensive tar sands extraction as well as lobbying public institutes like colleges, faith organisations and governments to sell whatever financial holdings they have in fossil fuel companies. This movement is based on the idea, to quote Ms Naomi Klein, that "anyone with a basic grasp of arithmetic can look at how much carbon the fossil fuel companies have in their reserves, subtract how much carbon scientists tell us we can emit and still keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, and conclude that the fossil fuel companies have every intention of pushing the planet beyond the boiling point".

The truth of the matter is that fossil fuel companies and the governments that facilitate them are a greater threat to global security and stability than any of the so-called terrorist groups that the Government regularly condemns in this House. The fossil fuel business model and its cronies should be put on trial. Given the international consensus around the realities of the issue of global warming, it has become morally unacceptable to be financing fossil fuel extraction. However, that is exactly what we are doing with the Corrib project. Under current licensing terms, the State retains a 0% royalty share in any oil or gas found in the Shell Corrib project. According to a 2007 study commissioned by the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Ireland offers one of the lowest government takes in the world.

Yesterday in the AV room, while the Government was preparing to reassert its support for the violation of women's human rights, a woman from the Philippines named Ms Lidy Nacpil spoke about the effects that climate change was having on her country, not tomorrow, but today. She described how just one of the now normal mega-typhoons in 2013 took the lives of 10,000 people and destroyed the homes of 2 million others. She pointed out that, while the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, had agreed on the safety limit of a 2° increase in the global temperature by 2050, for her people even 2° was not acceptable. In fact, what needs to be done is to keep the temperature rise as low as possible, as matters will worsen for the Philippines.

Here we are, in a country with one of the highest levels of carbon emissions per capitain the world, handing over our fossil fuel reserves to one of the world's largest polluters as a gift at Corrib while branding as criminals those who object to the wilful destruction of the planet. Here we are discussing a climate Bill that does not promise any plan until 2017 and no progress report until 2023, fails to set an emission reduction target for 2050, does not commit to a definition of "low-carbon economy", refuses to make the expert advisory council fully independent and fails to recognise the importance of the principle of climate justice.

In Ireland, we emit more greenhouse gases than the poorest 400 million people living on the planet put together. As noted by Stop Climate Chaos, Ireland is emitting 17 tonnes of greenhouse gases per person per year. This makes us the second worst polluter in the EU, where the average is 11 tonnes. We need to recognise that we are not innocent, that we have benefited at the expense of others and that it is time to do our part to redress the balance.

Much like tobacco companies profit from the wilful damaging of people's health, shortening the length and quality of people's lives and, in millions of cases, assisting in their early deaths, fossil fuel companies profit from the destruction of our atmosphere and planet, the contamination of the air we breathe and the water that supports life on Earth and the undermining of the chances of decent survival for billions of people. The organs of justice around the world have forced the tobacco giants to pay billions in damages to those whose lives they have violated. In a just and progressive world, we would start to see similar cases brought against the fossil fuel industry and the governments that facilitated their extractivism, which is doing much to diminish the quality of life on Earth and the chances for the meaningful survival of our species.

The reality is a far cry from this scenario. The Government is colluding in one of the most drastic transfers of power in world history. The secretive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, TTIP, which the Government and the mainstream media refuse to discuss in anything resembling a critical manner, contains a series of investor rights that will allow businesses to bypass national court systems and sue governments in private arbitration panels, including over health and environmental protection measures passed by the Dáil that they claim undermine corporate profits.

To return to Ms Klein on this subject, she points out that current trade and investment rules provide legal grounds for foreign corporations to fight virtually any attempt by governments to restrict the exploitation of fossil fuels, particularly where a carbon deposit has attracted investment, extraction has begun and the aim of the investment is explicitly to export the oil, gas and coal for sale on the world market. When people are informed of the reality of the trade rules that allow capitalism to function in its current form, they usually express disbelief, but the truth is out. The interests of corporations are more important than the well being of the entire population of the planet.

The Government with its neoliberal agenda does not challenge this doctrine. In a written answer to me last November, the Minster for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Bruton, stated his belief that the investor-state dispute mechanism included in the TTIP was a valid one. Is it really valid that, under the agreement, a fossil fuel giant could sue the Government for its decision to ban fracking in the west? Such cases are being filed more frequently than ever. Ms Klein reports that, as of 2013, a full 60 out of 169 pending cases at the World Bank's dispute settlement tribunal had to do with the oil and gas or mining sectors compared with a mere seven extraction cases throughout the entire 1980s and 1990s. Ms Lori Wallach, the director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, says that, of the more than $3 billion in compensation already awarded to corporations under US trade agreements and bilateral investment treaties, more than 85% pertains to challenges against natural resource, energy and environmental policies.

Through the TTIP, corporations are being given the right to become the authors of the legislation that is supposed to curb and monitor their destructive behaviour.

The last buffer that protects civil society from the pure, unfettered greed of the profit motive, which drives the corporate-led exploitation of the planet and its people, is being breached. This Government has repeatedly demonstrated that it is a willing facilitator of this movement.

Everything is connected and all the legislation that passes through this House should reflect that truth. We need to see the climate change situation for what it really is - a chance to remake the country and the world for the better and to do our bit in the global fight to make the world habitable for the global populations of today and tomorrow.

Last week, the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, said that we have no austerity problems in Ireland. Are we to take it then that the funding is available for infrastructural projects that are needed to mitigate climate change?

I, too, look forward to Committee Stage of this Bill when we hope to argue for many of the recommendations of the Committee on the Environment, Culture and the Gaeltacht which are being sidelined in such an unfathomable manner by the Bill as it currently stands.

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