Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

It is amazing that we are having this debate as Storm Lorenzo approaches the west coast of Ireland. Our thoughts are with my own friends in Lahinch, Galway, Inishbofin, Achill and many other places, north and south. The west coast is going to get a real hammering tomorrow and I pray that everybody there will be safe and that our homes will be secure. While there have been nights of the Big Wind in the past, Oíche na Gaoithe Móire, we are now loading the dice. The basic physics of climate change are not disputed by any scientist of note. The reality is that the energy in the ocean, which is now warming along with the atmosphere, is being transferred into our weather system. Rain is increasing, droughts are spreading and a whole range of different effects are being felt which will present a huge challenge to our country and the wider world.

In debating what went on in New York last week, first and foremost we have to pay tribute to Greta Thunberg. What she has done in articulating the science in a really clear and concise way has been very significant and important. She and the other people involved in the climate strike movement deserve great credit. The simple maths referred to in the scientific advice delivered a year ago by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows that, if we are to keep a 66% chance of staying below a rise of 1.5°C, which would still have massive consequences, we can only emit approximately another 420 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The world continues to blaze, putting out approximately 40 gigatonnes a year. One does not need to be a genius to see the urgency and the scale of the challenge we face in stopping those emissions.

I missed the Minister's speech here because I was stuck in a meeting on Brexit, but I heard his speech to the Environment Ireland conference this morning. He said something at the end which I believe is true. I cannot remember the name of the historian from the 1940s he cited but, if I am repeating the Minister correctly, he cited this historian as saying that great countries show their worth, value and greatness at great moments in history by rising to great challenges. This is a challenge like none before. If humankind is to make this leap and to avoid the tipping points and limits which Greta Thunberg sets out, this is the biggest challenge of all time. I believe this country will rise to this challenge and that doing so will make our country a better place to live. Taking it on will give us a sense of purpose, bring us together and unite us as a people.

This change can be for the better. It will require us to eat more healthily, to travel lighter, to waste less and to be energy clever. The Irish people are now up and open to meeting this challenge but they are not being served by the lack of ambition and vision of this Fine Gael and Independent Alliance Government. I will give some examples to back up that point.

On energy, the Government does not seem to understand that there has been a fundamental shift within the environmental community in recent years away from putting all the emphasis on market solutions and individuals' responsibility for what they do. Instead of focusing on the consumer end of this fossil fuel pipeline, we need to focus on stopping it at source and on keeping those fossil fuels in the ground. The maths set out by Greta Thunberg show that all fossil fuels have to stay in the ground including coal, peat, oil and particularly gas. The persistent notion that gas is a transition fuel is one of the greatest risks to taking on this challenge successfully and doing what science tells us we must. While I welcome the end of exploration licences for oil in deep waters, the Government must go further and extend this measure to all new licences for any offshore oil or gas exploration. Gas is not a transition fuel. If we burn as is planned, we will pass the tipping point and set the world on a downward spiral.

Similarly, if we are to take climate science seriously, we have to stop building gas infrastructure. We have to start here by not proceeding with the liquefied natural gas terminal in the Shannon Estuary. We should take it off the project of common interest, PCI, list and give a clear signal that this country will develop an alternative renewable power system and run our transport systems, our heating systems and every other system on electricity, which emits zero carbon, which is secure and cost-efficient and in which we have some expertise. If we put our mind to it, we can run and power our whole country in this way. There are no ifs, buts or qualifying that position. We have to stop investing in gas infrastructure. That applies to Europe as well as to Ireland. Europe now has secure arrangements to share gas, so our supply is much more secure than it was five or ten years ago. There is a massive over-investment in gas importation infrastructure across Europe. We should not add to it.

With regard to transport, I keep coming back to one simple truth. For all the talk about us taking climate action, there is not one single major public transport project in the planning system or being built at present whereas 51 major motorways and national roads are either being built or in the planning system. That has to stop. If we are serious about climate change, we have to switch. The crying shame in this is that the switch will actually make for a transport system that works while a roads-based system will not. We have to begin making massive investments in walking, cycling and public transport straight away as an emergency response. We have to admit that the national development plan is totally unfit for purpose. No climate assessment of the plan was carried out. There is no sense that climate emissions will fall or that electric vehicles will solve the problem. We are facing gridlock as well as pollution. We need to change our entire transport system. There is no sign of the Government doing that and that must change.

A third example of an area in which the Government is not changing is in land use. It defies logic that, every time we come back to the core issue of what we need to do to tackle climate change and the need for a land-use plan, the Government says no. It is beyond belief that last night Fine Gael yet again failed to recognise the scale of the biodiversity and climate crises or to recognise that we need to change our forestry model to allow for a much more biodiverse woodland system.

I could go on. At every turn we see this Government refusing to take the actions that any neutral observer would say are appropriate. In the area of waste, the continued blocking of our Waste Reduction Bill 2017 has been a shameful black mark on the record of this Government. The failure to accept the Just Transition (Worker and Community Environmental Rights) Bill 2018, which we brought before the Dáil two weeks ago, again runs contrary to everything we would be doing if we were serious. We have to make this a socially just transition as well as an ecological one. The failure to recognise that and to put resources into the mediation services and development teams we need in the midlands and elsewhere to make this transition demonstrates again that this Government does not take the issue seriously and is not leading the way.

I will give a final example of what needs to change. In his speech to the Environment Ireland conference this morning, the Minister said that Government and everyone else has accepted the need for a greater role for, and oversight from, the Oireachtas in what is happening. This fell at the first hurdle upon our asking for a fuel poverty study and a public consultation on the two options for the carbon tax, which are to use the revenue for climate measures such as retrofitting or to give the money back, which the Taoiseach agreed was the optimal approach. The Department of Finance completely failed to carry out that public consultation properly. Rather than setting out two options, it set out nine and it gave no explanation of the options, nor did it share the ESRI analysis which showed how a cash-back, fee and dividend model would deliver social justice in addition to cutting emissions.

All of this has to change, quickly and at scale. If we make those sorts of changes, we will bring our people with us.

In fact, they are ahead of the political system. They are willing and ready to stand up to the challenge of letting this country shine as we address this incredible task ahead of us. My party, working with every other party, looks forward to making that leap.

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