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

I am sharing time with Deputy Bríd Smith. We are taking five minutes each.

The obfuscation and the attempt to throw mud in our eyes that I just heard from the Minister of State really is extremely disappointing. It puts to shame people like the man whose bust is behind me in the Chamber, James Connolly. In a quote that is very appropriate to this debate, he said, "Our demands most moderate are, we only want the Earth." That sums up what the Minister of State's attitude should be to this Bill. It is a modest demand to do what is absolutely necessary because we want the Earth for our children and our grandchildren. We do not want to sell that future out along with a sustainable existence for our children and grandchildren on the basis of short-term interests. That is what is at stake.

It is simply beyond disputable fact that if we do not leave 80% of the known fossil fuel reserves in the ground, we are facing climate catastrophe. If we burn what is in the ground, global temperatures will rise by between 4° C and 6° C within the next 100 to 150 years. A 4° C reduction in temperature led to the last ice age and it took tens of thousands of years for that to happen and tens of thousands of years for the planet to recover from it. Imagine what a 4° C rise in temperature will do. We have no idea but it will be on a scale that is unimaginable. We will be literally selling the future of our children and grandchildren.

This is already happening. It is not hypothetical. Some 21 million people have been displaced as a result of climate change; 16 of the warmest years on record have taken place within the last 17 years; sea levels are rising by 3.4 mm a year, the fastest rate in 2,000 years; a crack in the Larsen C ice shelf recently saw a 5,800 km block of ice, four times the size of London, break off the ice shelf and drift into the sea, leading to the sort of rise in sea levels that we are seeing. Flooding is due to triple by 2030 on a global scale with disastrous consequences and costs.

What is the response of the Government to all of this? It is paying lip service to dealing with climate change while in reality bringing special pleading to the EU so we can get around having to meet the targets we need to meet. That is a pathetic record. We have had a 7% increase in emissions over the last two years. We are the third highest producers of emissions per person in the EU. There is failure on every level to invest in micro-generation, community-led renewables projects and failure to invest in expanding forest cover. We are missing our targets in terms of expanding the forest estate, failing to invest in public transport, to electrify the bus fleet, to reduce fares as Deputy Mick Barry already said, to introduce passive house standards, to reduce energy use, to retrofit old buildings to reduce energy use - failing to do anything, in fact, that would substantially impact on energy use and global emissions. This Government resists any tangible, concrete targets but engages in special pleading. This stuff has to stop.

It was people power of the sort we have seen from the Stop Climate Chaos coalition, Trócaire, Friends of the Earth, the Not Here, Not Anywhere group and from the people in the Border counties that forced the ban on fracking on the Government. At the time it resisted amendments suggesting that we should ban offshore fracking. If we do that we will force ourselves and the State to look at all the other things we need to do. If the Government keeps saying we need to think about, debate and discuss issues, we will lose time. The clock is ticking on towards irreversible, runaway climate change. If the Government is serious, this is a Bill that it should absolutely support. It proposes that there will be no more exploration licences. It is not asking that we turn off the lights now but it proposes that no more exploration licences be issued and that this country starts to invest. As the State built Ardnacrusha, a hydroelectric station, and transformed this country, please do not tell me we need capitalists to develop our power sources. We did it in the 1920s when Ireland was a Third World country.

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