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

On the long list of threats that President Trump's agenda represents to the world, near or at the top is his climate sabotage, that is, his determination to derail global efforts to deal with the climate emergency. I am disappointed, to put it mildly, that the Taoiseach made only a cursory reference to that. In recent days, the Government has made great play of its concern and determination to act on the climate emergency but for the world's greatest climate saboteur, we not only invite him and roll out the red carpet but do not challenge his climate-wrecking agenda. Is that because the Government is ultimately not so concerned about the matter?

Most notably, the Government continues to set its face against People Before Profit's climate emergency measures Bill, which seeks to give expression in law to the central demand of the global climate movement, namely, to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Like President Trump, the Government does not wish to upset the global fossil fuel industry and, therefore, it uses the trickery of money messages to underpin its determination to frustrate efforts to keep fossil fuels in the ground. It does this despite knowing, as does everybody else, including scientists, that the precondition for addressing the climate emergency is to keep 80% of known fossil fuels in the ground, rather than providing opportunities to explore for and extract even more fossil fuels, as the Government seems determined to do.

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