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

It is telling that some of the amendments tabled by the Opposition that were specific in terms of targets for CO2 emissions reductions were ruled out of order on the basis that they would be a charge on the Exchequer. I know it has nothing to do with the Minister, but I find that fact interesting, because that tells its own story. The Government does not want specific targets in the national mitigation plan because they will cost it money. We need to deal with runaway and irreversible climate change. It threatens the future of humanity. We will have rising sea levels, greater levels of flooding, more desertification and threats to food security. There is also the potential of those things already happening in the area of fuel. We have conflict, war, starvation, famine and mass migration. All of these serious things are already happening. If we reach the tipping point because we fail to take concrete, specific and decisive action on climate change, we are facing into a very dark future that is not too far away.

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