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

As the Taoiseach mentioned, there was talk in Europe of radical action on climate. However, the signs are that it is just talk. The green new deal is good on aspiration but very short on detail. In any event it was not possible to get everybody to sign up to it because Poland has opted out. When I say it is good on aspiration, carbon neutrality by 2050 is not a bad aspiration, but if we were very serious about things, we would be aiming for carbon neutrality by 2030 and taking much more radical measures than are being proposed and we would be considerably more specific in those measures. Of course, the COP talks did not really achieve much at all.

Looking behind the rhetoric in Europe, the picture is not so good at all. The Mercosur deal exposes any commitment on the part of Europe to addressing the climate emergency, because at the same time as talking about an environmentally sustainable economic model, Europe is trying to negotiate a deal with the Bolsonaro regime to import large amounts of cheap beef from Latin America based on the cutting down of rainforests, the lungs of the earth. Similarly, in this country the Government talks about climate action but presses ahead with a liquefied natural gas terminal, fails in its targets on afforestation and refuses to ban the extraction of fossil fuels. Is it a case of lots of rhetoric but not so much action?

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