Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Genuinely - I sound like Miriam O'Callaghan - I am very disappointed that we are having this debate on a night like this with so few Deputies to participate. I will make a proposal about that towards the end. I say that because I think it is unfortunate, as Deputy Ryan said, that we are having this discussion before the publication of the report and it is unfortunate that it is parked in the graveyard shift or whatever one calls this time on a Thursday night, because it is an important issue. I will repeat what others have said about the state we are in. We are the third highest producer of emissions per person in the European Union and ranked 49 out of 56 countries. It seems to me that our climate policy is to do nothing, to plead for special dispensations from the EU and to reduce any targets for emission reduction that we had aspired to. The Climate Change Advisory Council has already stated that we will not meet our 2020 targets, that the national mitigation plan will not result in decarbonisation and that we face, due to current emissions, fines in the region of €455 million or higher. Professor John Fitzgerald, who chairs the Climate Change Advisory Council says, "The plan has many ideas for action but it contains very few decisions".

We have official policy, various statements, lofty declarations and we have various Bills and legislation that commit us to emission reductions and decarbonisation of the economy. We seem on paper to recognise the seriousness of the issue but then we have Government inaction, effectively doing nothing to reduce emissions and to switch our society from being fossil-fuel dependent to renewables. The much heralded renewable energy support scheme, when one unpicks it, is really about big business and what big business needs. It contains rhetoric about community involvement but specifically excludes microgeneration and small community groups, something that we should all acknowledge needs to happen if we are to have communities buy in to dealing with climate action, to overcome opposition and to make the kind of shifts that are needed away from fossil fuels. The fact that they are excluded tells us what is happening with our climate energy policy - we do not have one. The level of emissions rises or falls depending on the policy and the fluctuations in the market. We are not decarbonising. We are as dependent on fossil fuels as ever and we are as governed by the interests of the fossil fuel corporations as we have ever been. I genuinely think, the more I see of this place and talk to people, that the Minister, Deputy Naughten, and probably even the Minister, Deputy Ross, feel they have a commitment to climate change but I know they would acknowledge that the power of the fossil fuel industry is greater than the power they have as Ministers. The lobbying and power of the big fossil fuel corporations and their addiction to profit weighs down on all the policy-making of this Government.

It is not only Ireland that is not responding to the facts of climate change. The whole world is in the same boat.

For all of our conferences such as that in Bonn and all of our conferences of parties, COPs, and for all of the grand affairs at the United Nations, the globe is now emitting a greater volume of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere almost 30 years after Kyoto and decades after the science has been settled and we have known with certainty what will happen if we push the parts per million concentrations in the atmosphere above 350 parts per million. We have known and the scientific community has known the consequences. What have been the results of those three lost decades? We now stand at more than 400 parts per million.

Those decades were lost in the fight against climate change because there was no fight. Instead, for a long time there was a denial industry and the consensus was to use market mechanisms to deal with it: carbon trading, offsets and bizarre schemes that suggested we in the West or in industrialised countries, if we were to continue to pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, could plant some trees in a developing country or have schemes based on inventive or fraudulent accounting as to what could be taken out of the atmosphere and as to what we were pumping into it.

All of these market mechanisms have failed, however. While companies and countries can pretend that they are dealing with it, the facts have stacked up and the levels of carbon dioxide have risen to historic levels. They are higher than they have been in the past 1 million years and the extremes of weather have continued to break all records. In the past 17 years, we have had the warmest 16 years on record. The extent and severity of droughts, heatwaves and storm intensity have all gathered apace. It is in the face of all those who say this is an intractable problem that we want to make a practical suggestion and we have already put a Bill before to the Dáil to address the question of the removal of fossil fuels from our shores.

It is brilliant that we passed a Bill and have banned fracking and the extraction of fossil fuels on land in the Twenty-six Counties. However, there was a refusal to accept an amendment to the Bill which would have also included offshore fracking. Therefore, we are proposing a Bill to the House to include offshore. I will repeat what I said to the Minister, Deputy Naughten, when I told him it was hugely disappointing and almost like a kick in the teeth to discover that, as soon as we went on summer holidays, he announced the issuing of a licence for further exploration in the Porcupine Basin. I understand that there are another 11 licences for exploration of fossil fuels, gases and oils off our coast waiting to be issued.

We were told by scientists in Bonn that the simple measure of Ireland, the pithy little country and all that it is, banning the extraction of further fossil fuels offshore would add greatly to the pressure on other countries and the industry generally around the globe. Two other countries are attempting to do the same. France is one of them. Deputy Eamon Ryan might help me with the other one. It is a small country.

See this speech in context