Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

When David Attenborough spoke at the climate summit in Poland earlier this week, he summed up very well the situation the world was facing. He said:

Right now, we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years: climate change. If we don't take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world are on the horizon.

In fact, the extinction of much of the natural world is not just on the horizon, it has already taken place. The devastating consequences of human action organised on the basis of capitalism, including debt and hunger on a mass scale, are already evident. I suggest the most powerful statement heard in Poland this week was made by a 15 year old Swedish school student, Greta Thunberg. She has been on a school student strike since August, at first all week and subsequently for one day a week. Over 20,000 school students around the world have participated in the strike. She spoke powerfully about this issue. She said:

Since our leaders are behaving like children, we will have to take the responsibility they should have taken long ago ... We have to understand what the older generation has dealt to us, what mess they have created that we have to clean up and live with. We have to make our voices heard ... For 25 years, countless people have come to the UN climate conferences begging our world leaders to stop emissions and clearly that has not worked as emissions are continuing to rise. So I will not beg the world leaders to care for our future. I will instead let them know change is coming whether they like it or not.

That sums it up for me. It also sums up the situation we face in Ireland.

The outcome of the deliberations of the Citizens' Assembly's on this issue, like the outcome of its deliberations on the repeal of the eighth amendment, has demonstrated that ordinary people are far ahead of establishment politicians on issues such as the environment. I remind the House that 100% of the members of the assembly voted in favour of the State taking a leadership role in tackling climate change, 97% voted in favour of the establishment of a new independent body to ensure climate change would be at the centre of policy making and 92% voted in favour of prioritising investment in public transport over investment in road infrastructure. The Government and the political establishment are continuing to fiddle while the planet burns. Their rhetoric is not backed up by any action. This is reflected in the fact that Ireland is second to last in the European Union in meeting targets. It is also reflected in the EPA's projections which show that we will achieve a 1% reduction by 2020, even though our reduction target is 20%. If the world's leaders, including the Government, are left to their own devices, they will continue on the road to absolute disaster.

I would like to speak about three biggest areas when it comes to emissions. Precious little is being done in the agriculture sector. The Government is not interested in touching the vested interests in areas such as agribusiness. There is a need for incentives to facilitate a radical shift away from agriculture based on dairy farming.

Nothing is being done in the transport sector. The Government bangs on about electric cars, but they are not the answer because they cause loads of problems. The processes used to extract the rare earth elements needed for electric vehicles are causing significant environmental problems in China. Instead, a different model of transport is needed. Fundamentally, we need a public transport model. The process being driven by the Government is furthering privatisation in the transport sector. It should be investing in public transport. The Luxembourg Government announced yesterday that it would make public train and bus travel free across that country. It follows its counterpart in Estonia in taking such an approach. If the Government were serious about tackling climate change, it would announce that Ireland was next.

In the energy sector the Government is objecting and seeking to block the Petroleum and Other Minerals Development (Amendment) (Climate Emergency Measures) Bill 2018 and the Prohibition of Fossil Fuels (Keep it in the Ground) Bill 2017 which are before the committee. The aim of the legislation is to block the further extraction of fossil fuels. There is no significant investment in renewable energy resources, even though it is clear that public investment is needed. The development of the Shannon LNG terminal is a further example of investment in fossil fuel infrastructure at a time when we need to be moving away from such infrastructure as part of a rapid and just transition to a zero carbon based economy. Two thirds of the gas that will be imported for the Shannon LNG terminal will be fracked gas from the United States which comes with various extra problems.

My conclusion is that we need a mass movement on this issue. That movement needs to be armed with an eco-socialist programme. It is only by taking the profits of the vested interests - big oil and gas producers and car manufacturers - out of the agenda and only on the basis of public investment, public ownership and democratic planning that we can take the drastic action we need to turn our world around.

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