Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I also welcome Deputy Pringle's Bill. It presents a great opportunity for this House to be at the forefront of an important environmental step. In his introductory remarks, Deputy Pringle made points that showed that it is beyond question that ISIF should not be investing in fossil fuel companies. Against the backdrop of those points, the Minister of State's request to Deputy Pringle to withdraw this Bill was at best petty but at worst the Government's own version of climate change denial because it really does not get the urgency of the current situation and the desperate need to take action. Even Ireland as a small country on the periphery of Europe could be a beacon to other countries around the globe by taking this step today. I am very glad that members of the public, NGOs and the Opposition benches are reflecting the mood of the public in respect of bringing today's issue to the House. The Government should hang its head in shame because not only is it not bringing forward this Bill but it will vote against it. I encourage it to think hard about that because it is out of step with what is necessary and the wishes of the Irish people. We need to do something and dealing with fossil fuels in this way is an important step we can take because the spectre of climate change is a reality.

The world's temperature has already been raised by one degree. That has been enough to melt almost half the ice in the Arctic, kill off vast swathes of the world's coral and unleash lethal floods and drought. In a matter of months last year, long stretches of the Great Barrier Reef, which dates back beyond the start of human civilisation and is so huge that it is visible from space, were essentially reduced to white boneyards. July and August 2016 were the hottest months ever recorded on the earth. Places like Basra hit 54° Celsius, temperatures at which humans could almost not survive out of doors. Forest fires forced the total evacuation of a city of 90,000 people in Canada. We are already seeing millions of people being made refugees as a result of climate change but it is a case of because it is not us and it is not happening here yet, we might be all right for a little longer. That type of attitude is no longer good enough anymore. This is what has happened at one degree of warning. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, tells us that if we carry on with business as usual, namely, our society's continued burning of fossil fuels and incentivising and investing in fossil fuels, the earth's average temperatures will rise between 2.6° and 4.8° above pre-industrial levels by 2100, so we do not have decades to deal with this or put this Bill back and tinker around with things. We are already in the middle of catastrophic change that needs to be addressed. The International Energy Agency's chief economist put it in bluntly when he said that the door to reach 2° is about to close and that in 2017, it will be closed forever. Activists are talking about decade zero.

This is the challenge facing humanity and the idea that we would not even move this relatively simple but very important symbolic step forward is shocking because we know 3° means the death of the Amazon rainforest and that 4° means that two thirds of plant species, one third of mammal species may not survive and 2 billion people will be without drinkable water. That is more than a quarter of the people on earth and this scenario is posed in the lifetime of children born today if we carry on as we are doing now. That is not exaggerating things. Some people believe the timescale could be quicker and the damage greater because of feedback loops set off as our climate disintegrates around us, so business as usual is not an option and we must fight to keep fossil fuels in the ground.

However, we must do more than that. We must acknowledge that our entire economic model of endless growth at any cost must be done away with. We must tackle the roots of neoliberal capitalism and the climate change that goes hand in hand with it. It is completely incompatible with human civilisation. We must engage in that struggle and in a struggle with the climate change deniers. It is poignant that the debate is taking place today before the inauguration of someone at the helm of the world's most powerful economy who is a climate change denier - a frightening spectacle. We cannot do anything about that but in our own small way, we could be an alternative beacon and vision of hope against it.

If the Government does not think that there is an issue or thinks that this is exaggerated, that is not the scientific view. In this regard the Government has been consistently shameful in its inaction on this issue. The climate action and low carbon development plan was a joke. It stands over a situation where energy users are paying a surcharge to subsidise peat burning for power generation in counties Offaly and Longford. This subsidy is €180 million per annum or on average, €230 per Irish citizen every year. The Government is incentivising agriculture, which will increase its emissions by between 6% and 7% by 2020. Transport emissions are set to climb by between 10% and 16% against 2014 levels. If the Government was serious, it would be doing something about the fact that we will fall a full 70% short of our 2020 emissions targets. We have an appallingly dirty record and are one of the worst per capital polluters in the industrial world. We have a chance to do something different here today.

The issue is bigger than divesting from fossil fuels but that does not mean it is not important. It is not just that it is symbolically important. Even if it was just symbolically important, symbolism is important and can have an important effect. However, that is not the only reason. It can have a concrete impact as well in terms of the effect of those investments. Trócaire put it very well at the presentation in the audiovisual room when it said that what is posed before the House today is making a stand against the spectre of public money being used against the public interest. That is what we are talking about. The taxpayers, citizens and scientists do not want that. Thankfully, enough people in this House do not want it so this Bill will proceed beyond Second Stage but I would appeal to the Government to come on board, wake up, stop the denial and at least catch up with where the Irish population is on this issue.

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