Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I wonder if we sandboxed today's debate, set it aside for 30 years and reopened it again like a time capsule, how would it be judged then? By mid-century, when the effects of our emissions have further worked their way through into the climate system; and when floods, droughts, and storms are more frequent and severe; when creeping inundation threatens our coastal settlements, how will all of our talk here about incrementalism, exceptionalism and relativism be received? When my sons are my age what will they think about what has been said here today?

Following this line of thought, maybe the statements on climate action in the UN General Assembly are the wrong focus for a debate here today. Maybe we should look instead to the Youth for Climate event that happened over the past three days, ahead of COP26. In what was Greta Thunberg’s corrugating assessment for global record of climate action, she said:

This is not about some expensive politically correct dream of bunny hugging, or build back better, blah blah blah, green economy, blah blah blah, net zero by 2050, blah blah blah, climate neutral blah blah blah. This is all we hear from our so-called leaders: words, words that sound great but so far have led to no action, our hopes and dreams drowned in their empty words and promises.

What are we to make of that assessment? That is how our young people, the ones who will reap the whirlwind of our actions and inaction, view our collective efforts. It will not do. It will not do when my middle child asks about sea level rise before he drifts off to sleep. I cannot turn to him and give him, "Blah blah blah". I feel that responsibility hugely. The weight of my voters, of the school kids I have taught, of generations yet to come, all of us in the Green Party feel that responsibility. However, that is not enough. We cannot do it on our own. We are prepared to make the difficult decisions, but we need others in this House to walk the walk as well.

Our Government partners are coming with us bit by bit, and I thank them for it, but we have to up our game, to increase our pace, and to be more radical and more ambitious in our agenda. We need our colleagues on the Opposition benches too. There are no two ways about it. The kind of changes we need to undertake as a people and a nation to achieve our decarbonising targets will mean undertaking a radical overhaul of our society and economy.

We need the help of Opposition Members to bring their voters and supporters with us. Quips and memes will not do the job. Simplistic sloganeering will not do it. Traditional Opposition politics of all sweets and no dentists is all blah blah blah. This is a call to arms for the Opposition as well. I agree with Deputy Bacik and the members of the Citizens' Assembly in that the State, in collaboration and solidarity with all its citizens, must lead and drive this transition. On the one hand, the Covid crisis laid bare the myth that the free market is the cure to all ills and, on the other hand, demonstrated the capacity of the State to respond in times of crisis, when supported by the people or communities and wider society.

In this current Dáil, we have made a step change in the scale of targeted ambition. The Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act set out the legislative groundwork. The next steps will be the setting out of our revised climate action plan, laying out our carbon budgets for the next 15 years, and publishing the revised national development plan. This will be challenging and it has to be because incrementalism will not cut it. It will create strain within the coalition; it has to. If it did not, it would mean that we were not pushing hard enough. It will create opportunities for Opposition Members and it will be up to them to decide on how to respond. Future generations are watching them as well as us.

Turning to the international context and the specific title of this debate, it was welcome to see the growing profile of climate change at the UN General Assembly and, importantly, Ireland's role in elevating that profile. Our counterparts in the developing world and climate vulnerable communities will look to us to demonstrate the follow-through that will come after the high-level events and meetings have finished and gone. Facing continual and increasing devastating climate impact, many countries cannot cope with the reality of climate change. Solidarity with the developing world cannot just be in words. It is in action, support on the ground, funding and finance. It means putting our money where our mouth is. We need to make good on the promise of the Paris Agreement and see a credible flow of finance provided without conditionality and at the scale necessary to drive sustainable development. We need to see a funded green recovery and finance package for developing countries with a delivery plan for $100 billion and delivering on adaptation, loss and damage. Ireland has a long-standing and proud legacy as a donor of high-quality overseas development assistance and climate finance. We need to build continually on this legacy, particularly as climate impacts intensify in countries that stand to lose the most.

The Yeats poem, "Easter, 1916" speaks to a very different historical context, yet it keeps rattling around my head in the run-in to COP 26. It opens with:

I have met them at close of day

Coming with vivid faces

and closes with:

... [All] changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

It is my children's vivid faces I see, and it is for their sake we need to change and change utterly. This is our generation's moonshot and we must bend all of our collective genius and resource to the task. This is nothing less than an existential crisis not just for humanity but for so many species that form this incredible biosphere, this pale blue dot which sustains life in a way no other place in our known universe can.

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