Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Paul Murphy. I have no questions that require an answer now, but I wish to make a few comments on the climate crisis in light of the Covid-19 crisis. It has been said by many commentators that the Covid-19 pandemic is only a slight foretaste of the type of disruption to society and economics that we can expect as we move further down the road to catastrophic climate change. There are certainly many lessons for us to draw from it on what will work for climate and the far-reaching radical action that we need.

We now have billions of people effectively in lockdown across the globe. We have dramatically reduced road and air transport and we are seeing reductions in CO₂emissions never recorded in history. However, this gigantic fall will, at most, lead to a reduction in annual levels of between 4% and 6%. The International Energy Agency says the world will use 6% less energy this year, equivalent to losing the entire energy demand of India. Carbon Brief shows that emissions will fall by 4% to 8%, between 2 and 3 billion tonnes of warming gas. That is between six and ten times larger than during the last global recession. To quote one scientist:

We are still emitting more than 80% of our previous CO₂emissions. That is a massive number. So personal behaviour really isn't going to fix the carbon emission problem. We need a systematic change in how energy is generated and transmitted.

One lesson we should take from the crisis is that a climate policy that rests overwhelmingly on changes in personal behaviour to tackle the greatest crisis in human history will fail because the issue with climate and CO₂is systemic and not the behaviour of ordinary people. I say to the Minister, Fianna Fáil and especially the Green Party that an emphasis on carbon taxes aimed at personal individual behaviour is a massive error and will waste the time we have left to avert catastrophe in the climate.

The other lesson relates to the over-reliance on the free market as the provider of key public services. This can turn out not only to be a costly mistake with regard to broadband, CervicalCheck or schools or hospital building, but when we hits a major crisis like this pandemic it can be fatal for many. From the failures of nursing homes to a dysfunctional two-tier health service to the failure of childcare provision, it is clear that reliance on the market or international investors will not give us the type of services we need either in good times or in this emergency. Our climate policy continues to place its hope in private companies and investments in offshore wind energy. We will remain dependent on their prospects for profit in the years to come. The seven proposed offshore wind projects mentioned in the past month are very welcome, but there is no mention or vision of a State-led investment programme that can rationally plan the scale and the necessary timing for the transition away from fossil fuels.

Similarly, the announcement of the just transition report and its €11 million investment fund are meant to deliver just transition for workers and communities devastated by ESB and Bord na Móna closures, but in the meantime workers continue to be thrown on the scrapheap and treated abysmally by their State employer.

This fund will at best be a sticking plaster over the abandonment of many thousands of people, pensionable jobs in favour of private industry working, lower pay, precarious contracts and with, of course, a coat of green wash.

There is no vision of what just transition really means. There is no ambition to use that skilled workforce in a State-led renewable energy project. That is not surprising. For the past four years, this Government has obstructed legislation that would curtail fossil fuel use and exploration. It has supported plans for liquified natural gas, LNG, facilities and it continues to parrot, even in the teeth of the evidence from science, that gas is a transitional fuel.

Like other Deputies, I have been receiving emails from climate campaigners urging me to support a programme for Government that accepts and acts on the best climate science. I assume they are hoping that it will give an impetus to talks between Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party. If those parties arrive at a programme, it will probably mention climate more times than any other previous Government programme. It will be full of inspirational rhetoric. It will tick a lot of boxes and may fool some climate activists for some of the time but it will not deliver the far-reaching radical action that is needed. Both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are ideologically committed to neoliberal policies. Both are the architects of inequality in housing and in health. Both are defenders and champions of the fossil fuel industry and the private investment interests. They will never deliver the systemic change the Covid-19 crisis has shown us that we need.

We want to see a science-led response on climate change, now one led by economics posing as climate science. We need to look elsewhere and build a movement that is required for climate change. We need to change the system and not just change the climate.

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