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

At least with the Taoiseach's predecessor, Deputy Enda Kenny, we got the truth about Fine Gael's attitude to climate change and the establishment parties' attitudes to climate change. Deputy Kenny went to Paris for the climate talks and he said simply and honestly - I suppose we can grant him that - that climate change is just not a priority for the Irish Government. That was the truth then and it is clearly the truth now, as demonstrated by the actions of the Government in general on the issue of climate and in respect of this Bill. The difference with the present Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, is not that the policy has changed one iota; it is that the spin and the rhetoric has changed as part of this image of a progressive, socially liberal leader on the world stage. There is the idea that now the Government cares about our future and about the climate. We have speeches from the Taoiseach saying we are laggards on climate change, which is correct, and that we have to change. He was patting the students on strike ten days ago on the back and patronising them as he said, "Fair play, it is great they are taking action", and so on. He is cynically using environmental arguments to consider again greenwashing austerity policies, as the Government has done in the past. However, fundamentally there is no change whatsoever in the attitude of this Government. Ireland is the second worst country in terms of meeting targets in the entire European Union. There is a refusal to do anything substantial about it.

When it comes to this Bill, the Government is not just doing nothing but it is actively operating to subvert the will of this Dáil and the vast majority of people by seeking to block legislation that has passed Second Stage through undemocratic, backroom manoeuvres. It is an absolute scandal that the time of the Dáil has to be used tonight to push this through when it could have been done without debate and we could have got on to debating the substance of the Bill on Committee Stage. It is revealing about the attitude of the Government. It is absolute madness that in a situation when we know that the current world's known fossil fuel reserves are four or five times as much as can be burned without destroying our planet that the Government would like to be able to continue to issue exploration licences. It speaks to a deep blindness on the part of the Government and the political establishment. This blindness is reflected around the world. It is a refusal to take action both by those who do not accept the science, including the likes of Donald Trump, and those who claim they do accept the science such as this Government. In a sense, it is even worse. The Government acknowledges the role of human action in climate change but it will not do anything about it. On the surface, from the point of view of humanity as a whole, it seems entirely irrational. The actions of world leaders are equivalent to lemmings leading all of humanity off a cliff of environmental catastrophe. The only explanation is that vested interests stand in the way of the interests of humanity as a whole. The vested interests of the fossil fuel industry, which represent some of the most powerful corporations in the world with the greatest political clout, are fighting a rearguard battle in Ireland to try to prevent this Bill going through. They are doing so for two reasons. They want to continue to explore here and, perhaps even more important, they understand the international significance of the Bill if it was passed. They do not want a message to go out saying that the rule of the fossil fuel companies is coming to an end and they are going to be restricted.

It is a microcosm of the more general problem. The science is clear. The latest IPCC report stated that we have 12 years to avoid global warming going over 1.5°C. That is now less than 11 and a half years. After that, another 0.5°C increase would have absolutely devastating consequences such as sea level rises affecting 10 million people, 99% of coral being damaged and insects wiped out. Humanity has managed to cause the extinction of 83% of the world's mammals. The current level of commitments from governments worldwide, which are not even being kept, would result in a 3°C rise. In terms of what is being done, we are heading for a 4°C to 5°C increase in temperature, which would be devastating for our planet and for the people and species living on it. Fundamentally, capitalism stands in the way. The drive for private property and those people who control the economy and make the decisions about how our world works stand in the way of doing what is rational from the point of view of society and humanity as a whole. That is precisely why a movement is essential. Without a movement, capitalist governments around the world will not move a single inch. It is why the school students' strikes ten days ago were so impressive, impactful and important. We had about 1.5 million school students taking strike action in the biggest global day of school student strike action ever seen in the history of the world.

More than 10,000 - perhaps as many as 15,000 - young people in Dublin and 5,000 to 7,000 across the country were involved. These young people are leading the way, and have already forced the resignation of the Belgian climate minister. She will not be the last minister to be claimed by this movement for refusing to do what is necessary.

We have to argue that others follow the lead. The Government should be following the lead, but we know what interest stands in the way. We also have to argue that trade unions follow that lead. Workers should have a vital interest in a plan for a rapid and just transition to a zero-carbon economy. Workers in unsustainable industries should be guaranteed a transfer to a good job in a sustainable sector. That movement must be armed with an eco-socialist programme. These are the only policies that give us a chance to achieve what the science clearly says we need to achieve in a very small space of time. We have to pass the legislation required to keep fossil fuels in the ground. It is absolute madness that we would consider extracting and burning more fossil fuels. We have to re-nationalise the fossil fuels that exist in this country and keep them all in the ground.

Other policies are needed. We need free public transport. We have to get people out of cars and into properly funded, free, quality public transport served by well-paid workers with decent conditions. The Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Ross, recently told us that this would cost €600 million, which is the same figure we could be facing in fines from the EU because of our lack of action on climate change from next year. We need a massive home retrofitting programme. Ireland has the worst emissions from households in the European Union - some 60% more than average - because the quality of our house-building is so poor. A massive programme of retrofitting, including solar panels and insulation, is needed. We need a programme of transition in agriculture to transform our biggest emitting sector. It is completely unsustainable. This should be done on the basis of public ownership of big agribusinesses and a different model of grants, which would enable the shift to a fundamentally different model of agriculture from what we currently have.

The fundamental point is that we need to have a societal change. As Deputy Bríd Smith said, the dominant slogan on the climate change march was "system change, not climate change". The system standing in the way is capitalism, and in my view the change we need to see is socialist change. This is fundamentally captured by the idea that we know the 100 corporations responsible for the 71% of emissions. We know who they are., what they have done and why they have done it. It has been done to maximise profits, and because capitalism treats the environment as an externality that those companies simply do not have to care about. The economy cannot continue in the same way if we are to have the rapid transition we require. The idea that these polluting companies, in private ownership, are going to change in the necessary way in the next 12 years is incorrect; it is not going to happen. In order to preserve a habitable world we need to take those companies into public ownership and democratic control so that we can rationalise, reprioritise and restructure production to create a permanently sustainable economy. It is simply not possible for an economy based on private ownership as a means of production to undergo the rapid transition required. A democratically planned economy is required in order to suppress fossil fuel extraction and usage and to transition quickly and justly to a renewables-based economy.

Karl Marx outlined that even an entire society, a nation or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations. It is only on the basis of those eco-socialist policies that that bequeathing can take place. Capitalism has outlived its usefulness for humanity. This is nowhere better demonstrated than the climate crisis we are in. It has destroyed our environment and disrupted our climate. It has relegated a billion people to the point of slow death by starvation and malnutrition. It offers no way forward. Instead, we need a rapid and just transition to an economy based on zero emissions. This means leaving fossil fuels in the ground, investing in the transition to renewable energy, passive houses, retrofitting, free public transport and democratic planning over our economy in order to meet the needs of people and the planet.

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