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

People Before Profit fully supports this proposed microgeneration Bill and I commend Deputy Stanley on bringing it forward.

It seems to me that the Minister would be fully supporting this Bill, as would any Government that understood and really got what climate change actually means. The dangers of catastrophic climate change are a priority issue that is facing us and while the Minister would say that, what he does does not prove it because it means we must urgently look at how we consume and produce energy and take all of the steps needed for a massive switch to renewables, while reducing our consumption. Democratising the energy grid is a vital step in this process, which would allow us to actively engage households and communities in making the switch to renewables on the scale and in the timeframe that is needed.

Recent reports, particularly the one from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, have utterly changed the narrative on this issue. The IPCC stated “Limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.” The Minister's attitude to this Bill is none of the above. Those changes will mean leaving 80% of proven reserves of fossil fuels in the ground and cutting our emissions by 10% annually until we get down to negative emissions. Does the Minister accept that this is necessary?

The changes the IPCC talks about are proposed to avoid extremely dangerous, as opposed to dangerous, climate change, that is, the difference between a global temperature increase of 1.5° Celsius or of 2° Celsius. We should be clear that both of those overheating measurements mean a death sentence that will hang over large parts of humanity and of the world's biodiversity.

The difference is whether we want to condemn large parts of humanity and the earth's life to a climate and planet which is not conducive to habitable life. A lack of action means we are effectively saying we cannot reduce CO2 emissions, so we accept that the future is one of extreme and deadly heatwaves, longer drought periods, failing crop harvests and rising sea levels.

One would think that given this possibility and given what scientists say to us, that all of our resources, all of our ingenuity and all of our creativity would be marshalled into doing what is required; that is, reducing and eliminating our use of fossil fuels. One would think that any Government which understood that and which understood what is at stake would be moving heaven and earth to get us off oil, coal and gas in all areas and utilising all available renewable energy. In fact, the Government has displayed breathtaking ignorance and disregard for these realities.

As was previously mentioned, the Government is opposing my Bill to ban exploration for fossil fuels to prevent their use and I understand the Government is now stalling on Deputy Stanley’s Bill. Just as it stalled on Deputy Joan Collins' Bill on the water referendum, it has kicked to touch on anything progressive that is coming from the Opposition such as Sinn Féin's Bill on banded hours, a Bill on protecting defined benefit pensions, our Bill on sex education or the Bill on medicinal cannabis. The opposing of my Bill to ban exploration for fossil fuels that we cannot use shows breathtaking ignorance.

The Government continues to pursue an agricultural policy that is unsustainable and will massively increase our national emissions and it continues to pursue policies in public transport and housing and development that ignore the reality of the scientific facts of climate change. What we get is spin and the speech that the Minister just gave is absolute spin and he is very good at it.

One of the key challenges we face is mobilising popular support for the measures that must be taken to avoid catastrophic climate change. Some people feel despair at the fact that there can be widespread opposition to large scale wind farms around the country. They call it NIMBYism but I understand that opposition and I argue that it is not just NIMBYism. There are legitimate reasons and if we want to win people to forms of renewable energy, then we must seek the involvement of the communities and local people in any project.

Telling people that they must accept massive wind farms put up by faceless multinationals, interested only in profit, is really not good enough and telling them also that we must have a carbon tax, is really not good enough. We will lose the battle against fossil fuel corporations and vested interests if all we have to offer is a vision of the future with carbon taxes for ordinary people and large windmill farms making profits for major international private companies.

It is worth remembering that carbon tax comes from the same ideological source as carbon trading, offsets and the clean development mechanism, which are market mechanisms that have all failed to reduce carbon emissions. Relying on similar ideas from the same neoliberal school will also fail.

We need much more radical action. One step is to seek to democratise the energy grid as is proposed in this Bill. The aim of this Bill is similar to one of the measures I proposed in 2016 when I proposed an amendment to the Energy Bill 2016 that sought to give access to the national grid for small-scale producers of renewable energy, but which was opposed by the Government.

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I was told at the time by the then Minister, Deputy Naughten, that it was been considered and that it was complicated but that some measure would be taken. Two years later we have got the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPPC, but no action has been taken by the Government.

The fight against climate change needs more than carbon taxes or large windfarms as a solution. Support for microgeneration of renewable projects at local and community level is one way to get people involved and to effectively democratise the energy system. It is a first small simple step we could take to signal that we are serious about climate change.

We must first reduce the demand for energy and for fossil fuels. Households and local communities that can provide for their own energy demands via renewable sources could make a huge impact on the steps we need to take. Going further and allowing those people to supply electricity back to the grid would also make a huge difference in the years ahead in reducing the demand for energy.

I hear many of the objections and it strikes me as amazing that, given what is at stake, there are question marks over this Bill that reference what the market will or will not take when it comes to making a proposal such as this one. We have heard that the Government may use the requirement of a money message against the progress of Deputy Stanley's Bill. It is as if tackling climate change was an optional extra or possibly just one extra policy decision the Government may or may not make.

This Bill needs to be supported. If the Minister's recent rhetoric on climate change, which we heard, and if the recent press releases about all of government approaches and large climate action funds mean anything, he will support this Bill. However, I suspect that the spin and promises are just an attempt to mask the gross and negligent failure of the Government's policy and the failure of the Minister responsible for this area, who has been known in the House as the Minister for climate inaction. In doing so, the reality of the Government would be exposed and clearly, as a country, in order to tackle climate change in any serious way we would have to get rid of this Government in the first instance.

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