Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

A recent study from the European Parliament examined average agricultural greenhouse gas production in the EU between 2012 and 2014. The data collected reflect how much agricultural output, valued in euro, is generated for every tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent emitted. The best-performing country in the European Union, Italy, achieved some €1,700 of agricultural output per tonne of emissions. Ireland, the worst-performing country in the EU 28, achieved less than €400 of agricultural output per tonne of carbon emitted. How bad is that? This study was based on the 2006 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change guidelines that have been shown by NASA to be wrong as they dramatically underestimated the amount of emissions coming from the beef and dairy sectors.

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The lies being told to protect this incredibly destructive sector must stop before we can have an honest discussion about climate change. Ireland has done next to nothing to reduce its emissions, the proof being the 3.5% increase last year. While Ministers plea for a special case and complain along with the farming lobby about the Green Party signing us up to unachievable targets, other countries are making the transition. The Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour parties sat on their hands for years. We only produced the legislation in 2015, eight years after we signed up to the greenhouse gas reduction programme. There was nothing in the legislation. It kicked the can down the road for two years and contained no reference to targets. We had no national climate change strategy at all between 2012 and earlier this year when the Minister for Communications, Climate Change and Environment, Deputy Naughten, published a mitigation plan An Taisce dubbed as an unmitigated disaster.

The elephant in the room, along with the cow, is power generation. Scotland has increased its power generation from renewable sources from 20% in 2009 to 43% in 2015. In Ireland, in 2015 a total of 8% of energy was from renewable sources. The small amount of extra energy coming online from renewable sources will all be eaten up by the data centres that will be built here in the next five years. In effect, we are in a bad place and jogging to stand still. That means all the talk of electric cars is not what it is built up to be until we address how we produce electricity. Are we going to switch from petrol and lethal Government-subsidised diesel to cars being powered by oil, gas, peat and coal and a tiny bit of renewables, some of which will be fake renewables?

There has been much fanfare about the diversion of funds towards biomass but the reality is that biomass is dirtier than coal and far more carbon intensive than burning natural gas. I have raised those issues numerous times with the Minister, yet he is going to go along with the climate damaging policy. The European Environment Agency's scientific committee, the European Commission's joint research centre and the European Commission itself, among many others, have all observed the premise that biomass combustion does not result in carbon accumulation in the atmosphere is wrong. Similarly, the IPCC has pointed out that its approach of not accounting for biomass emissions in the energy cycle should not be interpreted as a conclusion about the sustainability or carbon neutrality of bioenergy. When one burns forests, the carbon dioxide is released instantaneously but the bogus argument from the biomass industry is that the CO2 will be captured again by forest growth but that process will take up to 50 years. This cycle is not something we can afford. We need to look at how our energy policy affects carbon dioxide levels now, not over a period of decades. The push towards biomass is industry-led and all over the world we are seeing power plants that were built to burn coal or peat being switched over to burning something else while the industry-concocted lie that it is green is shoved down our throats. In the UK, there have even been corruption scandals with the MP who chaired the all-party parliamentary group on biomass accepting tens of thousands of pounds in bribes and leisure trips to Miami from the biomass industry. In Ireland, the industry has secured millions in public subsidies.

In the realm of transport, we are not doing much better. The Minister for Communications, Climate Change and Environment, Deputy Naughten, said last week that we are running a number of initiatives with the public and private sectors to convert from traditional fossil fuels to electric vehicles. That is not an accurate statement. The lack of public investment and progress on electricity grid and renewable technologies means that in Ireland electric cars run on fossil fuels. Let us add to that the fact that the electric car industry is dependent on child labour in the cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, DRC. The DRC supplies half of the world's cobalt at the moment and the entire process is mired in corruption, scandalous human rights abuses and the ongoing violence and warfare in the region which is not unconnected to the mineral wealth of the country.

We have not begun to deal with the housing crisis in this country yet and it will probably get worse before it gets better. We have a growing population and there has been much talk of late about apartments being too expensive to build. We will have many more problems if we keep covering the country in concrete and keep building houses further away from where people work. If one goes anywhere in Europe, one will see apartments for people to live in cities. We have not done that nearly enough. I accept that the construction of apartments gives rise to many issues and that we must take a different approach but if we refuse to look at the long-term plans for how we supply housing in this country, we will make dealing with climate change even more difficult. There are added climate change costs attached to building homes further away from the centre of cities. People have to spend longer in cars and other forms of transport on their commute. Given that we are unlikely to build light rail soon, it is a serious issue. It is a no-brainer that we must think very differently about apartments. The big problem with apartments in this country is that they were not built for family living but that can be done. If it can be done in Europe, then we can do it. Apartments can be built for families. We just have not done it and unless we start to do it, we will add to our climate change problems.

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