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

I thank Deputy Cullinane for his remarks on the Taoiseach's comments, which were dangerous and dishonest. On climate, is the Taoiseach, in talking the talk on climate change with his European counterparts while at the same time sabotaging efforts to do what is the central demand of the climate movement, namely, to keep fossil fuels in the ground, not guilty of gross climate hypocrisy? Keeping fossil fuels in the ground is the central demand of Greta Thunberg, the school students who protested and will protest again, Extinction Rebellion, Friends of the Earth, the Green Party and Sinn Féin. The majority of Members of this House support a Bill to keep fossil fuels in the ground and have democratically voted for that legislation on two occasions. Despite the clear desire to keep fossil fuels in the ground and for emergency measures on climate action, in the last 24 hours there has been another attempt to sabotage a Bill to keep fossil fuels in the ground, with licences having been issued to two of the largest multinational fossil fuel corporations in the world to drill for more fossil fuels. This is shocking hypocrisy. The Minister's justification for this is that it will not make any difference to our targets, as if the destruction of the global climate has frontiers which stop at our borders.

The point about climate destruction and climate change is that neither knows any borders. Does the Taoiseach accept what the intergovernmental panel and all the scientists have stated, namely, that to prevent reaching a 2°C increase in temperatures globally, 80% of known fossil fuel reserves must remain in the ground and that looking for new fossil fuel reserves and facilitating such activity flies directly in the face of what the global climate movement is seeking?

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