Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Although there are not many of us here now, I hope to see everybody who works in the Dáil, Deputies and public representatives out on the streets tomorrow demonstrating with the young people. It starts at the Custom House at 12 noon. It is part of a worldwide movement to keep pressure on governments to change the way they implement climate change strategies.

In explaining the dialectical nature of the process of development of society, Karl Marx said a thing arrives first as a possibility with the freedom to do something and then becomes its opposite, as a necessity to do something. We have reached that point. We do not just have the possibility of changing the way we live and the type of society and economy we have, it is now an absolute necessity to do so. Climate change is most certainly real and the solutions must also be real. Tinkering about will not halt this catastrophe. We need a radical reorganisation of society on a world scale and we should be quite clear about what this means.

Much commentary on climate change focuses on what individuals and households need to do and, of course, there are measures that individual households can take to help reduce carbon emissions. However, this is only a small part of the problem. The majority of energy use and carbon emissions come from industrial activity, the extraction of fossil fuels and the manufacture and distribution of goods. We need to eliminate fossil fuels as an energy source in terms of transport and the generation of electricity. I add my support to those calls for the Taoiseach, who will attend the UN summit on climate action next week, to tell the banks, particularly the Irish banks, to stop investing in fossil fuels.

Rapid transition to renewables is an obvious requirement. This must go hand-in-hand with retraining workers in that area. There must be a programme for the just transition as outlined in the Bill before the House this evening. I certainly will support it. Last Monday week, there was an interesting piece in a Nevin Economic Research Institute, NERI, blog on an International Labour Organization survey that shows a clear link between union density and climate change. Unionised companies are forced to pay greater attention to health and safety issues and the environment. This is why it is very important that the unions are taking part in the demonstrations tomorrow to show their support for this. They know they are part of the process of change.

Many scientists now argue that to make the transition possible we need to reduce energy use. This is referred to as degrowth. This is a move away from GDP growth as the only measure of progress. It has been correctly pointed out that the overwhelming majority of increased income goes to a very small majority at the top. Despite significant GDP, real wages in the US are at the level of the 1970s, which is almost 50 years ago. We have consistent rising rates of poverty and inequality levels similar to the 1920s.

One way to reduce energy is to eliminate planned obsolescence. In the production of consumer goods if a fridge, washing machine or mobile phone were designed to last at least twice as long as now we would produce less. We would also reduce the energy used in the transportation of goods. We could also revert to making goods that are easily and cheaply repaired instead of throwing them away. A couple of weeks ago, my oven broke down. It was about eight years old. I was told the parts cannot be found any more and that I would have to buy new one. It is ridiculous. Things are being made to force people to buy more. We could ban single-use plastics. We could move to free public transport to reduce car use and cut back on their manufacture.

A big question is whether these measures would cost jobs. Would degrowth mean a recession with high unemployment, more austerity and even higher poverty rates? Not if we take the economy on a world scale out of the hands of the 1% and use it for the benefit of the 99%. The legal working week could be reduced to 30 hours over four days, sharing out the work and achieving full employment. A shorter working week does not mean less pay. We could have a weekly living wage. This is a vision for a new fair and just society where we would share out the existing wealth, work less for better pay, have good public services, live longer, healthier and happier lives and stop the blatant privatisation of our services in the interests of the market and the markets extracting resources in the Third World. Many people would probably call this socialism and correctly so. It is the only way to avoid the impending disaster of climate change. If this is the case we must change drastically our way of thinking and of running our economies.

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