Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

Let us be clear, we are tobogganing towards absolute environmental catastrophe. We are now at a tipping point with climate change, with a 40% rise in concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide between 1750 and 2011. Global average surface temperatures have risen by almost 1° Celsius since 1901 and by over 0.5° Celsius since 1950. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, expects, at the very least, a 2% rise in global temperatures above pre-industrial levels by 2100 but it could be significantly higher. It has been repeatedly reported that a rise above 2° Celsius could trigger the release of methane from thawing Arctic tundra while the polar ice caps, which currently reflect solar radiation into space, could disappear. This could bring about a negative dynamic feedback effect and increase the speed of climate change.

We know this will not just bring about an impact on the environment and it will also affect people. The World Health Organisation predicted in a recent report an increase of 250,000 deaths per year from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress as a result of climate change. It affects the social environmental determinants of health, including clean air, safe drinking water, sufficient food and secure shelter. It also costs a huge amount of money.

We are tobogganing towards this economic disaster with our eyes wide open, and that is the point of the IPCC reports. They now indicate there is a 95% certainty that climate change is occurring mainly because of greenhouse gases released by human activity and, above all, the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. That certainty has increased from 90% in the previous report. We are destroying our planet and we are going to kill people; we are already doing so as a result of these policies. The Irish, European and world establishment are doing effectively nothing about this, despite being aware of the problem and solution. We have had 19 international conferences since 1992 with no effective and concrete action. Even the European Commission target of a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 is a target not in line with science or what is actually necessary. Non-governmental organisations across Europe have called for a target of at least a reduction of 55% in greenhouse gas emissions. If that ambition is not realised, the EU's international pledge to stay below 2° Celsius of global warming is all but impossible. We know what is happening and why, and we also know the consequences. Nevertheless, the world establishment is unwilling to do anything about it.

In Ireland, the issue is even worse. We have a climate change Bill that does not even have a target for emissions reduction, as my colleague noted, or a definition of "low carbon". A climate change advisory council will be set up that will not be independent, unlike the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, which indicates that austerity is important but tackling climate change is not. The climate change Bill has no reference to climate justice, despite the obvious fact that the poorest in the world and those with no responsibility for the creation of the problem will overwhelmingly pay the price for the increase in climate change. There is to be a two-year period where we will not have to implement a national mitigation plan. We may have a plan for 2013 to 2020 but we may not get it until 2017, which is patently ridiculous by anybody's standards.

We need co-ordination to tackle this issue. On the one hand, one might argue that at least we have lip service for climate change in the Bill. On the other hand, the Government and the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Bruton, in particular is one of the foremost advocates of all trade ministers across Europe for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, TTIP, with the US. That process will have major negative environmental consequences in two ways.

Regulatory co-operation means either harmonisation, mutual recognition or equivalence of regulations, and these have the same effect of bringing the lowest common denominators for environmental regulation, as well as consumer legislation, worker rights and other issues that exist. As part of TTIP, the EU wants to include a legally binding commitment guaranteeing the free export of crude oil and gas resources by transforming any mandatory and non-automatic export licensing procedure into an automatic process. There will be an increase in exports and all the travel costs that go with that, with fossil fuels, oil and gas, going both ways between the EU and US if TTIP is implemented. There will be an increased reliance on fossil fuels in the EU and more emissions. Other relatively progressive aspects of EU law, such as the fuel quality directive, will be challenged under TTIP, as it is already being challenged under the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, CETA, with Canada. The EU's regulation of fluorinated gas in refrigerators and freezers will be challenged. These elements have explicitly been set out on the US side as elements to be challenged in the course of the TTIP negotiations.

The other way TTIP undermines any effective environmental regulation is through the investor state dispute settlement, ISDS, mechanisms, or private administrative tribunals whereby companies can sue for so-called indirect expropriation. These processes are already being used to undermine any effective right to regulate in the interests of the environment. We can already note the case of Lone Pine Resources Inc. taken against Canada because of Quebec's moratorium on fracking, and something similar could happen here. There is also the case of Vattenfall taken against Germany because of its moratorium on nuclear power, and exactly the same process could occur here if any Government implemented a policy that infringes a right to profit in favour of the interests of the environment.

A very large number of companies between the EU and the US would have the ability to sue, including companies that are effectively based in the EU but are able to designate themselves as US companies in order to sue their own governments to prevent any effective environmental regulation. The fundamental issue is whether we are willing to stand up to the corporations in the interests of the planet and people. A recent report in the journal Climatic Changestated that a mere 90 companies have produced 63% of the cumulative global emissions of industrial carbon dioxide and methane from 1751 to 2010. Nearly 30% of those emissions were belched out by the top 20 companies and half of the estimated emissions occurred in the past 25 years. They are the usual suspects such as BP, Chevron Corporation, ExxonMobil and Shell.

To prevent climate change, we must state that the interests of the planet come before the profits of these corporations. There must be public ownership and, above all, there must be democratic planning at EU level and worldwide to transition as fast as possible to a non-fossil fuel based economy and to try to repair the damage that has been done and is already costing lives.

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